#the headaches have been making a resurgence though

[suboficialflores]

Listen, 5 years ago I'd completely forgotten how to cook and I was existing on coffee, Oreos, and tortillas. I forgot sandwiches existed. It was a dark time. The past few days I cooked so many different things to help my sister cater an event, and I only messed up a couple of them

[ghcstao3]

“Come on, stupid thing. Work.”

Soap has been toying with an old radio for the better part of an hour now, ever since he’d gone digging through the safehouse’s storage and discovered the thing. Ghost’s headache has only grown since.

“This fuckin’—“ Soap mutters a string of curses under his breath. He smacks the side of the small device. “Is a spot of entertainment too much to ask for? Christ.”

Right. Because they’re trapped in the cabin overnight at least, and according to Soap, that demands they find something to pass the time. Unfortunately the deck of cards Soap had also pulled out was missing half its count, and the books on the shelves have too-faded print between their insect-eaten pages, so the radio it is.

God forbid they sit in silence and mind their own.

Finally, the wretched thing crackles to life. It’s all static as Soap searches through frequencies, and Ghost has to suppress a groan. Even Soap’s mumbling had been more bearable.

“Hold on… I think… yes!”

The faintest melody filters through the ancient speaker, just a channel of classical music since it’d be unlikely that much else would be reaching them where they’re holed up.

Ghost is making a mental count of his inventory for the nth time when a hand appears in front of his face, beckoning. Ghost raises an eyebrow at the mischievous look on Soap’s face.

“Dance with me, LT,” he says. “Not taking no for an answer after all the trouble I’ve just been through.”

“I don’t dance, sergeant,” Ghost replies flatly. “Find a better partner. That’ll waste your time.”

“You’re such a wet blanket.” Soap rolls his eyes, but still doesn’t retract his hand. “It’s just us. I won’t tell anyone if the big, bad Ghost does a bit of dancing. Swear it.”

Ghost scoffs. Soap snatches his arm and hauls Ghost to his feet despite his resistance. The music fades and resurges with the radio’s signal as Soap drapes Ghost’s arms over his shoulders and settles his own hands on Ghost’s waist.

“Not takin’ the piss, are you?” Ghost grumbles. “Gonna teach me how to waltz, Johnny?”

“Maybe I will,” Soap says matter-of-factly. “‘S that a problem, Lieutenant Riley?”

Ghost frowns. “Is when you use my full name.”

Soap snorts. “Yeah, okay. Just shut up and sway to the music. Indulge me a smidge, would you?”

Though Ghost huffs, for whatever reason he can’t find it in himself to pull away.

As they do, in fact, sway—for a brief, terrifying moment, he thinks that maybe this isn’t the worst thing in the world, like he thought it’d be at first. Like he is trying to argue his brain into believing.

And he doesn’t mean the dancing part itself.

[keldae]

8. “If you give me a minute….I think I can make this worse.”

This was officially worse than the djinni incident, in Gale’s humble opinion.

First, he had been left in the camp that morning, when he’d woken up with a headache that wouldn’t abate, even with Shadowheart’s healing touch. He’d been forced to sit by while Devi had ventured out with Wyll, Astarion, and Jaheira – and the fretting about his beloved half-Elf did not ease his headache at all, even with Jaheira’s assurances that she wouldn’t let her “cub” get into too much trouble, despite Bhaalists and a psychotic shapeshifter in the form of Orin running around Baldur’s Gate.

An hour after the four had left, there had been what had to be the far-away, but still distinct sounds of a riot happening – yells, and explosions, and the too-familiar noises of a Steel Watcher mechanically issuing orders. Gale’s gut instincts told him that Devi was somehow involved.

The riot noises eventually subsided, and for a good portion of the day, it had been suspiciously peaceful around the camp. Gale’s headache still wasn’t going away, but after drinking an herbal tea that he’d sent Karlach to go barter for (thank Mystra that the tiefling had gotten the right one), it was almost bearable. He suspected he would be fine to accompany his beloved little thief in the morning on her next venture out into the city.

The Fist patrol stopping by the ramshackle camp was a surprise. The two guards had looked around the site for a minute, tilting their heads at Lae’zel and her impressive weapons collection, and blinking at the large owlbear cub (who Halsin, before his abduction, had named Garmus), and politely nodding at Dame Aylin and Isobel, before taking their leave. Apparently the nautiloid survivors weren’t the only adventurers to make their temporary residence in the run-down alleys of the Lower City – the Fist soldiers didn’t seem perturbed by their presence.

The two Guild members who had popped in about an hour later were another surprise. Gale felt his headache resurge when the dragonborn had asked about “a pretty half-Elf with her hands in everyone’s pockets, and a devil with a sword who looked a lot like a younger Duke Ravengard, and another particularly pale Elf with red eyes, and the older woman who was trying to corral the lot of them”. Eventually accepting that nobody left in the camp knew what the hells their friends had gotten into, the Guild members finally shrugged and walked off.

Then one of Jaheira’s adopted children had meandered in, took one look around for the High Harper, swore under her breath, and left the same way she’d come.

“Something’s gone wrong,” Gale said, fidgeting with his staff and ignoring Shadowheart trying to push him back to his tent. “Gods be damned, I should have gone with them!”

“You weren’t able to so much as sit up without your head trying to kill you until after noon!” Shadowheart retorted. “Sit down, or I’ll stuff a sleeping potion down your throat, Gale.”

Gale gifted the cleric with a scowl, then set to pacing through the camp, disregarding Shadowheart’s threat. “We need to find them. We should have set out when we first heard the pandemonium this morning. If we–”

“Baldur’s Gate’s a big city,” Karlach dubiously pointed out. “You really wanna go meandering down every street and back alley to find them? Jaheira and Devi can both blend into a crowd.”

“Wyll and Astarion both stand out though,” Lae’zel commented. “Unless there are other devils walking around the city with swords on their backs, or Elvish vampires. Surely we can find them.”

“Unless they’ve taken to the sewers again, or the rooftops,” Shadowheart said. She ignored Gale’s groan at the distinct possibility. “And gods help whoever tries to find someone in the sewers. If it were me, and I was being hunted by apparently everyone in the city, that’s where I would go.” She watched Gale pacing back and forth, and sighed. “Scratch, get Gale to sit down, will you?”

Scratch just barked inquisitively at Shadowheart, then trotted over to Isobel for pets.

“That wasn’t helpful,” Shadowheart muttered.

Dame Aylin chuckled, leaning against the wall. “I’m sure they’ll turn up soon – Deviali’s quite the resourceful one. She–” She yelped in surprise as the stones by her feet suddenly started to wriggle. “What the hells!”

A manhole was opened, disguised (for some reason that Gale would never be able to wrap his head around) by the cobblestones. Wyll’s horned head popped out of the opening; the warlock looked around, then grinned and looked back down. “Right one this time!” he called, before scrambling out of the hole. “So… we’ve had a day,” he started to say, brushing off his clothes from gods-only-knew-what. “Do you really want the details?”

“Oh, hell yes!” Karlach crowed, eyes alight with excitement.

Wyll made a face. “All right. So it started with Devi trying – and failing – to pick a Fist’s pocket… again. She got caught, and it was either ‘pick a fight and earn the ire of the entire Fist, plus a Steel Watcher’, or ‘run’, so we decided to run – or rather, she decided to run, and the three of us got roped in with her since the Fist’s companions had seen us together earlier.”

“Was that the riot noises we heard?” Isobel asked, tilting her head.

“I’m getting there.” Wyll sighed. “So, Devi decided to pick an escape route that took us through a crowd of people in a bazaar, and naturally the Fist gave chase. Here’s where it gets bad – my horns may have caught a low-hanging sign on a building as I was running and knocked it down, but it was attached with a clothesline to another building’s facade and brought it down in the middle of the crowd.”

That got winces from everyone listening. “Anyone hurt?” Shadowheart asked.

“Probably, but we didn’t have time to stop and check,” Wyll answered. “We somehow escaped some of the notice, but some of the civilians noticed the Fist and the Steel Watcher, and blamed them. Half of them started shouting at the soldiers, and the other half was trying to catch us. It was chaos.”

“So that was the sound of the riot…” Lae’zel murmured. “We wondered what that was.”

“If you give me a minute, I think I can make this story worse,” Wyll dryly said.

Gale stared at the warlock, his brain pounding in his skull. “It gets worse? Worse than the four of you being chased by the Fist and half of the Lower City?”

Wyll just winced and nodded. “Devi’s fine,” he quickly assured the wizard. “... Relatively speaking.”

Gale felt his eye twitch. “What do you mean, ‘relatively speaking’?”

“I’m getting there, Gale, keep your robes on. Where was I?” Wyll thought for a moment. “Ah, yes. So, we were running, and Devi ducked down an alley to throw off pursuit. There was an open manhole in the alley, so naturally the four of us dived down it.”

“Even Astarion?” Karlach asked with a laugh.

“Even Astarion,” Wyll confirmed. “We got down the ladder and started down the corridor we were in, until we came around a corner and found a group of Bhaalist cultists having some sort of a meeting. I’m not sure which of our groups was more startled – them, or us. But, you know Bhaalists – the weapons were coming out, no matter how Devi tried to talk us out of it.”

Gale sat down on a bench and started rubbing his temples. “How bad was it?”

“Surprisingly not that bad, all things considered. But, I do think I have to kill Mizora for fucking with my magic,” Wyll muttered. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she had done that, just to mess with me.”

“That’s a demon for you,” Dame Aylin said with a sage nod. “... What did you do?”

Wyll sighed, then took a subtle step away from Gale. “So, I was casting a spell, and was aiming at one of the cultists, but my spell went completely sideways… literally.” He gave Gale a sidelong look. “Devi… may or may not have gotten hit by it.”

Gale was back on his feet in a heartbeat, staff in his hands. “What?”

“It was an accident!” Wyll cried out. “And in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that bad a spell–”

Before he quite realised he was moving, Gale was in Wyll’s face and staring the other man down, his headache increased by his freshly-renewed bad mood. “What. Spell?”

“... Polymorph,” Wyll sheepishly said. “At least it wasn’t the eldritch blast?”

“Just what the hells did you polymorph her into?” Gale demanded.

Wyll just looked down at the manhole as another pair of gloved hands suddenly emerged. Jaheira clambered out of the manhole, grumbling under her breath and with a fiercely-wriggling satchel on her hip. Devi and Astarion, Gale noted with no small amount of dread, were nowhere to be seen. The High Harper looked at Wyll and smirked. “Ah, so you survived telling our resident wizard what you did to his beloved?”

“It was an accident, I swear!” Wyll said, quickly looking back at Gale. “If it’s any consolation, apparently it was a two-for-one cast – Astarion got hit with the polymorph as well.”

“And turned into what?” Shadowheart asked, coming up behind Gale with a curious look in her eyes.

In answer, Jaheira reached into her satchel and started fishing around. “Ow!” she exclaimed, glaring at the satchel and its contents before extracting both hands from the bag. In each hand, she held a writhing, angry kitten by the scruff of its neck – one coppery-red with green eyes, and one with bright white fur.

“... You polymorphed them into cats?” Gale demanded as Karlach collapsed with a howl of laughter.

“If it’s any consolation, I intended on polymorphing the cultist I was targeting into a sheep–” Wyll started to say.

“That is not consolation!” Gale reached out for the coppery kitten; Jaheira was only too willing to hand the cat over. The kitten, who had to be Devi to go by the fur and eye colour, stared at Gale as he held her at arm’s length and meowed plaintively at him. “Oh, my love,” Gale sighed, “what the hells happened to you?”

“Don’t listen to her complaining about the satchel,” Jaheira growled. “She and Astarion both got distracted with trying to chase a rat down there, and it fell to me to wrangle them into the bag!”

“There was also the Guild member we came across, who Astarion bit on the ankle before Jaheira could catch him, and I fell through a weak wall while chasing Devi and wound up in someone’s basement, so we had to run again while the homeowner was chasing us, and then there were the very angry githyanki loyalists who were coming after us for a spell, not to mention a couple more Fist soldiers when we accidentally came up through the wrong manholes…” Wyll trailed off as Gale glared at him. “... But, we made it back to camp safe and sound! And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a demon to summon so I can tell her off.”

Gale watched the younger man step away (probably making good his escape from the wizard’s wrath), then looked at the kitten in his hands and sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Devi?” he asked. “I suppose I should be grateful Wyll didn’t turn you into a mouse or a pigeon.”

The kitten meowed at him again; Gale shook his head, then drew the small animal up to his chest. Devi promptly used the opportunity to scale his robes with sharp little claws, earning winces from the wizard until she had reached his shoulder. She gave the wizard a headbutt, then meowed in his ear before curling up in a ball, precariously balanced on him. Gale sighed again, then watched as Jaheira handed a loudly-complaining Astarion-as-a-cat off to Shadowheart. “How long ago was that fight with the cultists, and the spell?” he asked.

Jaheira eyed the sun’s position in the sky contemplatively. “I would think about three hours ago?”

Gale froze. “... Polymorph spells don’t usually last longer than one hour!”

“I’m aware, Gale. I’m going with Wyll’s theory that his broken contract with Mizora is having an effect on his spells. We can be worried if they haven’t transformed back by the morning.” Jaheira shook her head and went back to examining the scratches in the leather of her gloves, left by tiny feline claws. “I should have something in my house about reversing a long-term-effect polymorph, but it will be a little difficult for me to get there with the Fist actively looking for us. I can try tomorrow, when the chase grows cold.”

Gale pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling his headache merrily pounding through his brain, then glanced over as he heard a noisy purr from his shoulder. “Oh, I’m glad you’re comfortable,” he dryly said to the kitten that had been his lover only that morning.

Devi mewed at him, then got back on her paws, carefully balancing on Gale’s shoulder as she started grooming his beard with a rough little tongue. Gale sighed, looking skyward. “Just how much of this are you going to remember when you eventually transform back?” he asked. “You did remember being a cheese. Then again, shapeshifters tend to adopt the instincts of whatever they have shifted into, and a cheese doesn’t really have any sort of an instinct…”

“Polymorphing is just strange,” Karlach said as she came up to Gale, eyeing Devi-the-cat, then looking over as Shadowheart tried to hand Astarion off to Lae’zel, who wanted nothing to do with the vampire cat. The tiefling was still grinning from ear to ear as she addressed Devi. “How about it? Are you gonna remember grooming your other half when we eventually get you back into a half-Elf?”

Devi meowed and went back to her task of grooming Gale’s beard.

Karlach laughed as Gale softly groaned. “It is kind of hilarious, Gale – and Devi makes a very cute kitten.” She glanced over at Lae’zel and Shadowheart. “Astarion would make a cute cat, if he wasn’t trying to scratch everyone’s eyes out,” she added, her voice raised enough to make herself pointedly clear.

Astarion just growled, loudly enough for Gale and Karlach to hear him ten paces away, even over the sounds of Wyll having a loud argument with Mizora by his tent. The white cat’s ire just got a snicker from Karlach before she reached to pet Devi’s back. “Y’know, from how you climb roofs so easily and how quiet you move, I always wondered if you were part cat, somewhere in your heritage.”

Gale blinked at the tiefling. “You think she has tabaxi heritage, besides the human and Elven blood?”

Karlach shrugged. “Maybe that, or one of her ancestors was a druid whose preferred wild form was a cat of some sort?”

“... It’s not the most unlikely idea I’ve ever heard,” Gale finally admitted. His eyes flicked down to the kitten on his shoulder. “Unfortunately, we’ll never know the truth of the matter–” He yelped as Devi batted at his earring, earning a snort from Karlach, then reached up for the cat. “All right, I have my boundaries, darling. The earring is off-limits, even for you.”

Devi meowed in protest as Gale brought her back down to his arms.

“No, I don’t care if you don’t like it,” Gale informed the kitten. “You are not allowed to play with my earring – it’s bad enough that I was tolerating you grooming me!” He sighed and gave Devi a rub behind her pointed ears, earning a purr. “All I need is for Tara to appear now and accuse me of replacing her with a younger, cuter feline companion.”

“She a jealous type of tressym?” Karlach asked with a laugh.

“Is there any other type?” Gale dryly asked, and got another snort from the tiefling. The wizard sighed and shook his head. “And I thought my headache this morning was terrible enough. I think it’s on its way to becoming a migraine.”

“Go rest in your tent – Devi might behave for you, since you’re her favourite person.” Karlach set her hands on Gale’s shoulders and gave him a gentle push to the tents. “I’ll help the others try to corral Astarion. Maybe if we put him on a leash…”

Gale paused, pursing his lips. “... My headache isn’t so bad that I can’t conjure up a leash for him,” he finally said. He pointedly ignored the feeling of Astarion’s feline glare on him as he waved his hand, and a leash appeared out of thin air. “Behold, my contribution to keeping Astarion from running off. And now, I’m going to go and take a nap.”

“Sweet dreams!” Karlach laughed as she collected the leash and made her way up to Shadowheart and Lae’zel, and the cat they were struggling to restrain. “You know, if you were less of an escape artist, we wouldn’t have to resort to these drastic measures, Astarion…”

Ruefully chuckling, Gale shook his head, then made his way back to his tent, depositing Devi on his bedroll before magically securing the tent flap, and any other avenue of escape the cat could make use of. “The longer you behave, the better your odds of not getting your own leash,” he informed the cat.

Devi meowed, then as Gale laid down, started grooming his hair.

Gale sighed. “I give up. You’re just going to groom me, no matter what I say, hmm?” He rested his head on the pillow, feeling as Devi licked his hair a few more times, then curled up beside his head and started purring. He reached up to give her pets, and felt the purring grow louder. “Thank you for choosing me as your favourite person, my love,” he chuckled, closing his eyes, letting himself drift off to sleep with his lover-as-a-cat beside him.

—

The evening mealtime did not see the two rogues returned to their biped forms. Gale poked at the fish on his plate, watching Devi, who was alternating her time between sitting at his side, waiting for another bite of his meal, and scampering around the campsite, never out of Gale’s field of vision. The wizard suspected she was intentionally flaunting her freedoms in front of Astarion, who was on the end of the leash secured under Lae’zel’s foot and making sure everyone knew he was not happy about it.

“It’s your own fault you’re on the leash, you know,” Wyll informed Astarion, munching on a roll. “If you hadn’t tried to climb up a building to escape…”

“I think putting all the fault on Astarion may not be warranted,” Gale muttered. “Contrary though he may be on the best of days.”

Wyll sighed. “It was an accident! And I said I was sorry for accidentally polymorphing both of them into cats!”

“And Gale will continue to be grouchy until the spell wears off and he has his woman back,” Karlach pointed out with a snicker. “Where is Devi, anyway?”

Gale looked around, then nodded with his head as Garmus the owlbear cub came lumbering up to the fire, Devi perched on his head like a proud knight. Scratch trotted beside the pair, tongue lolling out happily. “She probably won’t go far,” he said. “I’m here, and I have food – and I threatened her with her own leash if she didn’t behave.”

“Smart,” Jaheira said. “And coming from you, the cub – er, kitten – probably won’t push that argument too much.” She smirked. “Partially because she loves you, and partially because she knows you’ll follow through with it.”

A little smirk on his lips, Gale broke off a piece of hard cheese, then lowered his hand. “Psspsspssp,” he said, then sighed as Scratch scampered over first. “No, not you, Scratch.”

Scratch whined at Gale and set a heavy chin on his knee, looking up at him with big, soulful brown eyes.

Gale sighed again, then fed Scratch the cheese before breaking off another piece. “Devi!” he called. “Come here, before Scratch eats everything for you off of my plate.”

Devi meowed, then jumped off Garmus’ head and raced over to Gale, her tail standing straight up behind her. She leaped up onto the bench beside the wizard, then took the cheese from his fingers, happily eating it.

“That’s my girl,” Gale murmured approvingly, petting Devi’s back and hearing her purr. He handed her a piece of fish next, which she devoured. “Karlach was right, you know. You do make a cute kitten.”

With a mew, Devi finished her piece of fish, then climbed onto Gale’s lap.

“Although I’ll still be much happier when you’re a person again.” Gale ruefully chuckled, rubbing behind Devi’s ears as he lifted his plate safely out of range of both the cat and Scratch. “Veni et iuva me,” he muttered, and a Mage Hand appeared to rescue the plate, freeing both his hands to pet Devi. “Honestly, how do you and Astarion have such poor luck with being polymorphed? First the cheese, now the cats… in less than a tenday!”

“At least this time, neither of them is at risk of being eaten?” Shadowheart asked. She looked down at Astarion as he headbutted her leg. “You had your chance to get pets, and you tried to bite my hand. No pets for you.”

Astarion loudly meowed his protest.

Shadowheart sighed, then broke off another piece of her fish and fed it to the vampire cat. “I will say, we didn’t need to feed either of them when they were cheese.”

“Yes, but it's generally frowned upon to pet a wheel of cheese,” Wyll commented. “And they're cuter as cats than as food.”

“Technically,” Lae’zel pointed out, “they could be food if one was desperate enough…”

Gale frowned and tugged Devi a little closer to his chest. “Don't worry, my love,” he said to the cat. “I won't let anyone try to eat you.”

Devi purred, pushing her head into Gale's hands for more pets; the wizard obliged her willingly. “We appear to have gotten both extremes of cats; the snuggly cat who adores pets, and the standoffish cat who is a little too free with the claws,” he mused.

Astarion meowed at Gale, sounding more than a little put-out.

“Am I wrong?” Gale retorted. “Your own bad behaviour is why you're leashed now!”

Devi meowed, then jumped off Gale's lap and pounced on Astarion. The vampire cat irritably yowled and retaliated against Devi's attack, quickly getting tangled up in his leash.

Gale sighed, watching the two cats tussle. “... I really shouldn't just sit here and watch,” he said. “If I were a responsible sort of wizard, I would separate them.”

“But it would be hilarious if they transformed back right now,” Karlach pointed out with a grin. “Awww, Astarion is still bitey even as a cat!”

“Hopefully not for the same reason as his biting as a person,” Shadowheart said. She set down her plate, then took a deep breath and dove her hands into the fray, emerging with Devi held by the scruff of her neck. “Was picking a fight with Astarion really necessary?” she scolded.

Devi meowed, a definite note of annoyance in her tone, and waved her paws at Shadowheart's face.

“You can go attack Wyll's feet if you want to fight something,” Shadowheart said, standing up long enough to plop the cat back on Gale's lap. “Astarion, don't provoke Devi – she's almost as bitey as you.”

“Please don't attack my feet,” Wyll muttered. “For the hundredth time, I didn't mean to turn either of you into cats! I wasn't even aiming at you!”

“What did Mizora have to say?” Isobel curiously asked.

Wyll scowled. “She just laughed and said that she lives for the entertainment value I provide her. We can't count on her for assistance.”

Gale sighed, then tightened his hold on Devi when she tried to jump back at Astarion. “No, leave him alone!” he said, feeling his nagging headache pound at his skull again. “Deviali…”

Devi hissed at the mention of her despised full name.

“Oh, I'm so glad you understood that,” Gale said, lifting the cat to his eye level and sternly looking at her. “The leash is still a valid threat if you don't behave.”

The cat in his hands meowed, then started to purr.

“It's a very good thing you're cute,” Gale murmured, drawing the cat back to his chest. He winced as he felt Devi start climbing up his robes again; a second later, he felt a little paw batting at his earring. “Hey!” he scolded, pulling Devi away from his piercing again. “What did I say about the earring?”

Devi just stared at him and meowed.

“Touch the earring again, and I swear, I'll conjure up a second leash for you,” Gale threatened. He set Devi back on his lap, distracting her with another piece of fish while he kept a firm hand on her back, lest she try to climb up his body again. “What am I going to do with you if you don't transform back, love?”

“Present her to your tressym as tribute?” Lae’zel asked with a smirk.

“Very funny. Tara will not be amused.” Gale sighed, then frowned as he sensed the Weave crackling around him. “What–”

There were two flashes of light and a chorus of surprised exclamations. Gale jumped as he found himself rather abruptly with a lap full of Devi, laying on her stomach over his legs, his hand still on her ass. Astarion rematerialised by Lae’zel's feet, and promptly started clawing at the leash. “Get this thing off me!” he demanded. “Leashing is not my kink!”

“No? A pity.” Lae’zel smirked as she undid the leash, ignoring Karlach's laugh. “But I'm sure you do have other carnal enjoyments, yes?”

“Not after being leashed like an animal, I don't!” Astarion retorted, rubbing his neck and glaring at Gale.

“I hate to break it to you, but you were an animal a minute ago,” Gale pointed out. He looked down as Devi scrambled back up to a sitting position beside him. “Welcome back, darling. Are you all right?”

“I… think so?” Devi shook her head and wrinkled her nose. “My memory is… fuzzy.”

“As fuzzy as you were just now?” Wyll cheerfully asked.

Devi frowned at the warlock. “Excuse me, but I am not ‘fuzzy’!” She tilted her head as his grin got wider. “I feel like I should be mad at you for something. I remember being very small, and being picked up and handed around…”

“So you don't remember being a cat?” Jaheira asked. “Complete with scratching my hands up, and trying to make Wyll lose his other eye?”

“That was Astarion that had a go at my eye,” Wyll interjected, with a scowl at the vampire.

“A cat?” Devi blinked. “How the hells did I get turned into a cat?”

“Wyll happened. We're partially blaming Mizora.” Gale shook his head and wrapped an arm around Devi's shoulders. “You do make an adorable cat though… even if a bratty one.”

“... Thank you, I think?” Devi looked up at Gale, then leaned into his side, her eyes leaving his. Gale watched her for a moment, then saw her hand start to slowly rise to his ear, her eyes never leaving what they had focused on.

Instinct had him swat her hand back down just as her fingertips reached his earring. “Stop trying to play with my earring!” he scolded.

“I'm sorry! I just… feel compelled! It's so shiny!”

Gale sighed heavily as laughter echoed around them. “Your body might be a person again, but your mind is still that of a cat. Please don't pounce on Astarion again.”

“No promises,” Devi said. She looked around at everyone snickering (except Astarion, who had moved up from the ground to the bench and was trying to straighten his clothes, all while looking thoroughly miffed), then back at Gale, a moment before she put her legs across his lap and snuggled against him. “Don't mind me. I'm very cuddly tonight.”

Shaking his head, Gale slipped his arm down her back to hold her closer. “As long as you leave my earring alone and don't try to groom me again–”

“Wait. What do you mean, ‘groom’ you?” Devi demanded. “As in, with my tongue, and…” She saw Gale's smirk and slow nod, at the same time that Karlach fell off her bench laughing, and squeaked, burying her face in the wizard's shoulder to blush. “Oh, hells.”

“Didn't know you were into that!” Karlach laughed. “Or that Gale’s apparently into leashes–!”

“I am not into leashes!” Gale retorted. “It was strictly a means to keep our cats corralled!”

“Well, if we hear noises from Gale's tent tonight, we know what methods of carnal pleasure he and Devi are playing with,” Lae’zel said with a grin. “Is ‘kitten’ not a pet name used by some human lovers anyway?”

Gale groaned as laughter resurged around camp. He shot Wyll a glare. “This is entirely your fault.”

“I thought we agreed Mizora was to blame!” Wyll protested.

“It was still your spell!” Gale sighed and gave Devi a squeeze. “Love, as a personal kindness to me, please don't get polymorphed into anything else. The cheese and the cat have been quite enough.”

“Again – no promises. Technically this wasn't my fault… I don't think.” Devi winked, then leaned against his shoulder and made a little noise of frustration. When Gale looked closely, she was peering at his earring again, seemingly fighting the urge to play with the jewellery.

“Don't even think about it,” the wizard warned. “Or I swear, I will tie you up–” He glared at Lae’zel and Karlach as they burst into laughter. “Not that way, either!”

“... Promises, promises,” Devi said with a grin that promised misbehaviour later.

Gale sighed again, looking skyward. How was this his life now?

[giulolosblackmail]

cozytober2024: 26. Back To School Shopping

There was a knock on the door, one short rap for the woman working the front desk. "Come in," Magda called absentmindedly.

The woman was grimacing, and Magda felt herself mirroring her in sympathy. "He's back," the woman said simply.

Magda dropped her quill to rub at her temples, her newly persistent headache making a resurgence. "Did he bring...?"

The woman nodded. "Only one manservant to carry his things this time." Small mercies. Magda opened a drawer at her left and pulled a nice brandy Lord Sakan had gifted her last they met. It would soon be gone.

Ramus strode into the room with all the imperiousness of a duke and none of the class. "I know that, technically, the academy will be 'open to the public' but I cannot see an institution being anything other than formal in the highest regard. I've narrowed down the choices, but I wanted your opinion before I commit to anything," Ramus droned on and on and on as Magda finished another glass.

"The academy robes are standardized, Duke Jorcastle. They will, as I have shown you before, cover most of what you are wearing."

Ramus pursed his lips and waved his hand at his manservant to set up anyways. "Now, I'm only focusing on the inner robes today," Goddess help her, "I've been away from the Spire for far too long to remember what could be considered in vogue."

"I'm sure Lord Jorcastle is much more well versed than I in these matters," Magda put up a token protest.

Ramus waved her off. "An eccentric at best, a woman's touch is best for these matters." Magda wondered if she could bribe Dowager Jorcastle into taking back up the title of Duchess. Just for another year.

"Lady Jorcastle would be honored, I'm sure, to share her opinions with you," Magda added, only a bit sarcastically.

"I'm sure she would," he replied dryly. "Now, obviously I wanted to choose a much more vibrant green, it matches the color of my magic, so the effect is really stunning with this lighter fabric." Perhaps the Jorcastles were much more similar than any of them cared to admit. "It clashes a bit with the school robes though. It has more of a blue undertone and this green is more of a yellow."

Magda fiddled with the ring on her finger as he carried on. The stone was new, pigeon's blood rubies were returning to the limelight and mother wanted her ahead of the trends. She had an idea. "It seems," Magda interrupted, "a bit presumptuous. Don't you think." He hesitated and Magda jumped on the chance. "It just seems rather backwards to choose the clothing and then the gemstones. Especially when, as an instructor in a mage academy, it would cement your competency to display the fruits of your labors. Magical stones are, after all, such a complex art. It would give your students something to look forward to, a shining example, if you will."

Ramus was positively beaming. "I knew I was right to come to you first," he cheered, before sweeping out of the office, leaving his manservant to pack up and follow in haste.

Magda scribbled down an urgent missive, asking Xavier how long it took a skilled mage to create approximately 20-30 magic stones. She needed time to plan.

[sweetrevxnge]

Like Phantoms, Forever

Chapter Eighteen | The Devil In My Bloodstream

Pairing: Ben Solo x Reader

Summary: Your destiny had never been clear to you, only becoming so when it led you to leaving behind the life you knew to train with the galaxy's sole Jedi Master, Luke Skywalker. His Jedi Academy became your new home, bringing with it the promise of someday becoming a Jedi Knight.While navigating the ways of the Force, an inexplicable connection forms between you and a fellow student—the heir to the legendary Skywalker bloodline, Ben Solo. Together, the two of you must face your destinies and forge the path to your true selves.

What to expect: fluff, violence, sexual content, general angst, mentions/descriptions of injury and death

Additional info: this story is set in 28 ABY, six years prior to the events of TFA

*concurrently being published on AO3 and Wattpad as well!

Masterlist

Spotify Playlist

Word count: 5.2k

Chapter-specific CW: NSFW, pharmaceutical drugs, mentions of death

A/N: let's all just pretend that this chapter didn't take me two months to write... anyways let's get into it yuh!

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“So… Do you want to talk about it?”

Ben had made himself comfortable beside you on the small cot, the two of you laying back with your legs hanging off the edge. Well, at least your legs were—the same couldn’t be said for his exceptionally long limbs. His thumb rubbed soft circles on the back of your hand, and despite being left alone by 4-3B for nearly an hour now, you still feared being seen.

His question rolled around in your head. “It” was all you were thinking about—your father, your mother, the resurgence of the Empire. The relief you felt from the conversation with Master Skywalker was fleeting, now a daunting task once again. But a tiny voice in your head assured you that you were safe. Ben wasn’t just some acquaintance. He hadn’t shied away from discussing the dark side before, and after everything you had gone through, you couldn’t imagine him starting now. Although, you weren’t sure how much insight he would have on amatter this grim.

You sighed, twisting your neck to face him. “Not particularly.”

His eyes mapped your face, starting at your mouth before slowly moving up to your eyes. They were intense, filled with an indiscernible emotion.

“I know it’s still fresh, so if you don’t want to–”

“No,” you groaned, pinching the bridge of your nose to soothe the headache building behind your eyes. “I probably should. Avoiding it will only make things worse.”

The blankets draped over your lap shifted as you pushed yourself up to a sitting position. Ben followed, his hand quickly finding yours again.

With a deep breath, you attempted to untangle your thoughts and wrap them into a tidy coil. After a moment, you realized that you didn’t know what to say, as if every word in all the galactic languages had escaped you.

“I don’t really know what to say. It’s all so much.” Heat rushed to your face, chased by adrenaline at the memory of the dart piercing your neck. Instinctively, you lifted your hand to touch the spot, finding a small bandage in its place.

Ben squeezed your hand. “Would it help if I went first?”

You nodded. Despite your earlier eavesdropping, you were completely attentive.

“Well, let’s see,” he started, running his free hand through his thick hair. “I was in bed, just about to fall asleep, when suddenly, I saw you.” He looked over at you with an amused smile. “Not how I usually picture you when I’m alone in bed, though.”

Your cheeks burned, a familiar heat blooming in your stomach. His comment derailed your thoughts, redirecting them to build an image of him: bare chest peeking out from his robes, messy hair, eyes squeezed shut in concentration as his hand crept lower, pulling down the waistband of his pants—

The drone of the monitor recording your pulse grew louder, and you cursed your heart for misbehaving. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see his satisfied smile.

“Threebee can hear us, you know,” you said in a hushed tone.

“Relax. Worst-case scenario, I’ll just pick apart his brain—or circuit board, I should say.” He winked at you, to which you rolled your eyes. “But as I was saying, I was just about to fall asleep, and for a moment I thought I had. Everything felt like a dream—until it didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but in my dreams, I’m… sentient. Involved in the story in some way. This was different. It felt like I was an audience member watching a scene play out in front of me.”

Like a vision, you thought. “What exactly did you see?”

His brows creased. “Everything you didn’t.”

You were quiet, piecing the two conversations together. From what he told Master Skywalker, his vision began after you were unconscious, which would explain why he only saw you being taken away.

“I panicked. I tried to pull myself out of it to get to you, but it was like I was frozen in place, forced to watch it play out.” Heavy emotion filled his eyes. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there sooner.”

A pang struck your heart. “Don’t be,” you whispered, working up a small smile. Just like Master Skywalker, this wasn’t his burden to bear.

He ignored your request, rolling through to his next thought. “When the vision finally let go of me, I ran to your hut, hoping that it was only a nightmare. But when I found your bed completely empty, I felt…” He paused, his knuckles white as he squeezed his hands together, holding them up to his mouth. “Afraid. More than I’d ever been in my entire life.”

“That makes two of us,” you said, half-joking. The guilt from earlier was becoming heavier with each word he spoke, further proof that this entire ordeal had caused more anguish than you realized. In an effort to move past the sinking feeling in your gut, you asked, “How did you end up finding me?”

At that, Ben tensed. He must have known you would ask eventually, but you hadn’t expected him to be so hesitant when you did. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Up until yesterday, there were many things that you wouldn't believe. Certainly not that the Empire had been growing in the shadow of the New Republic for years, slowly spreading throughout the galaxy like a malignancy, or that your father was secretly a fascist who had spent his entire life serving that same institution. Nor would you believe that your peaceful childhood was a complete sham, or rather, a carefully crafted illusion of a picturesque family to hide the true nature of your father’s business. Least of all, you couldn't fathom the possibility that your connection to the Force was a precious commodity, precious enough to drive someone insane in the pursuit of exploiting it.

Master Skywalker was right. Perhaps some meditation would serve you well.

You scoffed. “Try me.”

When he finally spoke, his tone was low—enough to send a chill running down your spine. “I heard a voice. It felt familiar, but I can’t explain how—only that it was cold and harsh. In my panic, I trusted it, and it led me to Zeffo. To you.”

Your mouth parted in disbelief. What he described sounded like the voices you heard when you touched the dark stone. “Ben–”

“I promise that I’m not crazy–”

“No, you’re not.” Gently, you cupped his cheek and turned him to face you. His eyes were a storm, glassy and clouded with a familiar darkness. He needed to know that he wasn’t alone. “And if you are, then so am I. When I connect with the darkness, I hear it, too.”

He shook his head dismissively. “No. This is different. This has followed me for as long as I can remember.”

Unsure what to say, you remained quiet, trying to process what he was telling you. As curious as you were to know more about this mysterious voice, you also didn’t want to pry. “I didn’t mean to–”

A low laugh rumbled in his chest, barely audible over the thrum of blood rushing in your ears. “No, no, it’s okay. All that matters is that it helped me find you.”

The air felt heavy, settling uncomfortably between you. He was guarded, and despite his assurance, you could tell that there was much more to this story. The walls surrounding him were resilient, but they were no match for your persistence.

“What did it say?” you asked, inching closer to him as you rested your hand on his forearm. This had always worked in the past—whether it was draping a hand over his shoulder or winding your leg around his, albeit with much less significant topics. Just like most men, Ben wasn’t immune to a gentle touch.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek, his lips pressed tight together. “I don’t remember.”

His answer reeked of bantha shit. You only hummed in response, knowing that any effort to extract the truth would likely be futile. As much as you would have liked to know more, you weren’t necessarily keen on starting an argument over it.

Neither of you spoke for a long moment. You couldn’t help but wonder why he chose to withhold the details of what he heard.

Ben broke the silence. “Look, we can talk about this another time if you’d like. Right now, I’m more concerned about you.”

“Do you trust me?” The question burst free from your chest, as if you would implode if you didn’t release it. Though, now that the question was hanging in the air, you weren’t sure you wanted to know the answer.

He was quiet again, dark eyes flitting between yours. With every second that passed, you could feel your heart cracking, ready to shatter at a moment’s notice.

“Of course I do,” he said finally. “In fact, you might be the only person I trust.”

You blinked. Of all the answers he could have given you, that was the last one you would have expected. And because of that, it felt genuine.

Before you could say anything, he posed a follow-up question. “Do you trust me?”

Shame burned your cheeks. This was the right thing to do. Ben was your person, the only person you had ever let in. Without hesitation, he had flown across the galaxy to find you and bring you to safety. So, why did you fear his judgment? Deep in your heart, you knew the truth. It had been there all along, and despite your efforts to bury it, it would remain there forever, floating at the surface until you acknowledged it.

“More than anything,” you whispered.

He planted a soft kiss on your cheek. “Then talk to me, princess.”

Like a layer of ice in the sunlight, you cracked. A lump rose in your throat as the words formed on your tongue. “My dad was the mastermind behind all of this. He used the Empire’s tracking technology to find the Academy, then sent a group of mercenaries to kidnap me.”

Ben’s eyes widened, but he remained silent. You weren’t sure what reaction you expected. Disappointment maybe—or worse, disgust—but found neither. With a sigh, you continued, “I didn’t know that he was capable of doing something like this. He kept his past hidden from my mom and I, using his agriculture business as a front for his work with the Empire—or what remained of it.”

He furrowed his brows, processing each word. “Wait—your dad works for the Empire?”

You nodded, staring at the torn skin around your fingernails from mindless picking. “Was,” you answered, ripping another strip of skin from your thumb, causing a small drop of blood to form on the exposed tissue.“He was working for the Empire. Not anymore.”

“So, what, he had a sudden change of heart?”

There was no coming back from this. No amount of backtracking or lies could undo a confession of this magnitude. But he had made a promise to you on his ship, a promise that everything would be okay. Now, with his hand resting on your knee, you placed your faith in his promise.

“No. He's dead.” You let out a shaky breath to settle the nerves rolling through you. "I... killed him."

The silence that followed was suffocating, yet he didn’t pull his hand away from yours or stand up to leave. Instead, he just watched you, his eyes searching yours.

Hiding from his gaze, you continued. “I killed him after he told me that he executed my mom, all because she sent me to the Academy, to safety.” A warm tear rolled down your cheek at the memory. “He showed no remorse for what he did, even saying that killing her was like putting a sick animal out of its misery.”

At that, Ben's jaw clenched, his stoic expression morphing into something angry and cold, but you knew it wasn’t directed at you as he wrapped his arms around you and pulled you close. “What a fucking bastard.”

“He was never like this before,” you mumbled, now pressed against the rough fabric of Ben’s robes. “But hearing him say that awakened something horrible inside me. It possessed me—a terrible, cold energy that wanted nothing more than to inflict pain.” You paused, pulling away from him. “I felt it, Ben—the dark side of the Force. It flowed through me, used me like a puppet of its will.” Your voice had softened to a whisper. An echo of the Force rang in your mind; the intensity of it, the power that claimed your father’s life. Your mouth went dry. “I’m a monster.”

“No, you’re not. Don’t say that,” he said, tightening his grip around you. “You did what you had to do to survive. That doesn’t make you a monster—that makes you human.”

You wanted to argue with him, tell him that allowing the darkness to consume you was weak and against everything the Jedi represent. But you didn’t. You were walking through quicksand, sinking further into grief as you told the story.

“If you say so.”

“Yes, I do say so. What he did to you and your mother was terrible and not something that anyone—let alone his child—should have to endure. You had every right to do what you did.”

Guilt, again. Each time he defended you, the lump lodged in your throat grew, slowly closing off your airway.

“You’re right,” you mumbled in the hopes that by agreeing, this discussion would conclude quickly. You sucked in a long breath to settle the acid churning in your stomach. “I’m just thankful that he didn’t hurt anyone else. It makes me sick to think about what could’ve happened if they had attacked the entire Academy.”

Ben hummed in agreement. “I think there are a few people here who could’ve benefitted from being thrown into a fight.”

“Like who?” you asked, suppressing a light laugh. His wit never failed to make you smile—even in a moment like this.

“I think you know who,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at you. “The same people who are dying to visit you.”

You rolled your eyes and shoved him playfully. “Well, too bad. You’re the only person I want to see.”

“Not even Tai?”

“Especially not Tai.” The thought of having to talk to anyone besides Ben right now made you nauseous. Who else could understand what you went through other than the person who pulled you out of it? All the sympathy in the world couldn’t compare to the fleeting peace you felt sitting next to him.

Another question crossed your mind. What did it mean? What did it mean that Ben was the only person you found comfort in? The only person that was able to calm and excite your heart at the same time. 

This was insane. No, worse than that—pure delusion. An amalgamation of chemicals designed to turn even the coldest hearts into an inferno. A fool’s curse to fall for it despite knowing the truth. Yet, here you were, flying through the air as you plummeted to the ground. You had known all along—before you kissed him in front of the fire or sat beside him as the stars bled through the night sky. There was no comfort in knowing, only profound heartache. The Jedi Code had deceived you. Under its rule, there was no affection—only devotion. A hollow devotion to the light.

You couldn’t sit with him in front of a hearth in a space leased to the two of you, one of the many rooms in the highrises overlooking the hyperlanes of Coruscant. You couldn’t wrap your arms around his neck and listen as he shared the details of his day. You couldn’t move with him to the grassy plains of Dantooine, or to the lake country of Naboo—a decision that would be determined by the number of credits you could scrape together. But most of all, you couldn’t grow old with him. Watch as the years warped your faces and grayed your hair. Until the day came that you were forced to face this same heartache once again.

It was a fantasy.

“Baby…” Ben’s voice floated through the air, pulling you from your reverie. He wiped his thumb over your cheek, smearing warm tears over your skin. “Talk to me.”

You looked up, searching his eyes until the image of him became blurry. Your heart rattled your ribs as you gathered the courage to say it—the three words that had been burning your tongue for months. But as you opened your mouth to speak, the machine dispensing your medicine beeped, singing a series of cheery notes to announce that the dose was complete.

As the faint squealing of 4-3B’s joints grew closer, you and Ben reflexively jumped away from each other. You cleared your throat, erasing any evidence of your confession as the droid came into view, its triangular eyes fixated on the empty medicine bag.

“This was the last infusion of the day, miss. I suggest you rest now,” 4-3B said as it powered down the machine before hobbling towards a control panel and turning off the overhead lights.

Moonlight poured in through the blinds, washing the marble floors in a cool white. What you wouldn’t give to go for a midnight walk right now. To breathe in the crisp air and listen to the hum of insects. But instead of ripping out the line in your arm and rushing out into the night, you yawned and folded your legs up to your chest. The darkness of the room illuminated just how exhausted you were—both physically and emotionally. 

Ben sighed, somehow immune to the contagious nature of yawns. “Sounds like the princess needs her beauty rest. I should probably let you sleep.”

Thankful that he didn’t return to the previous topic, you matched his tone and narrowed your eyes at him. “You don’t mean that.”

He smiled. “No, I don’t.”

From behind the curtain, 4-3B chimed in, “You are more than welcome to stay in the spare cot, Master Solo. I can gather a fresh set of sheets for you if you’d like.”

A devilish look flashed in his eyes. “Oh, really? That sounds wonderful, Threebee.”

“Don’t,” you mouthed. The last thing either of you needed was Master Skywalker to find out that Ben stayed overnight in the infirmary.

He pressed his finger against his lips as if to say shhh. “I have an idea,” he mouthed. A knot formed in your stomach.

“It would be my pleasure, Master Solo. I hardly see why I should separate two friends after such terrible events,” 4-3B answered earnestly.

“That’s very kind of you.” Ben reached forward, grabbing the near-empty water pitcher from the side table. “Oh and before you go, can you refill her water?”

You sank further into the pile of pillows at the head of the bed, watching in horrified awe as Ben’s brilliant plan played out.

“Of course,” the droid said, returning to the side of your bed with a stack of sheets balanced in one of its hands. As it turned and reached for the pitcher, Ben leaned forward, deftly unplugging a thin wire connecting to the base of the droid’s neck.

Immediately, its entire frame went slack. The bedding fell from its hands and onto the floor as the light drained from its eyes.

“Ben!” you gasped, scrambling towards the edge of the bed. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Possibly,” he said, pushing the rigid droid behind the curtain. “If anything happens, I’ll boot him back up. But for now…” He hoisted himself back onto the bed and squeezed next to you, making the already small space even tighter. “It’s just us.”

The tension in your shoulders dissipated. There was a hummingbird in your heart, its tiny wings beating harder than ever before. His fingers trailed down your spine, tracing over the thin material of your gown. Your skin burned under his touch.

“Unless you’d prefer to be alone,” he said, settling his hand on your lower back.

“No, not at all.” You moved closer to him and rested your head on his shoulder. “Especially since you deactivated my only other company.”

He chuckled. “Good. Because I don’t think I can ever sleep without you now.”

“Oh,” you said softly. You supposed you felt the same way. The only reason you had managed to sleep on the Grimtaash was because Ben was with you—even if he was in the pilot’s seat. As for the previous night, you had 4-3B’s drug cocktail to thank for your uninterrupted slumber.

Resting your head on his chest now, you wrapped your uninjured arm around his waist. His heart was steady and strong in your ear, a hypnotic rhythm that you could get lost in. “Neither can I.”

Ben’s hand crept around your waist, pulling you flush against him. Even through the layers of robes, he was radiating heat—like a furnace with too much coal. Glancing up, you noticed that his eyes were closed, and despite the dull ache in your arm being pinned against his body, you stayed there, counting the muffled beats in the hope that they would lull you to sleep.

The cool night air bled into the infirmary, and without a medical droid to bring you fresh, warmed blankets, you were beginning to lose what little heat your body had left. Then, a wicked thought crossed your mind. Just like the night under the stars, you slid your cold hands under Ben’s robes, holding them against his stomach. He sucked in a sharp breath at the sensation.

“A little warning would be nice,” he said, his eyes still closed.

You hummed, relishing in the warmth spreading through your fingers. “What did Threebee say about me staying warm?”

“Mmm, something about your body temperature being too low. I can’t imagine why—considering what you’re wearing.” He cracked his eyes open to look at you, appraising the sheer gown you were wearing.

“Hey! It’s not my fault that this is the only thing that Threebee’s letting me wear.”

He snickered. “I know. I’m just giving you a hard time.” At that, he sat up, effectively pushing you aside as he untied his robes, undressing until only his underwear remained. “There,” he said as he settled back into the bed, pulling the pile of blankets over you both in the process. “Now you can steal as much of my body heat as you’d like.”

"Don't mind if I do," you said as you turned to lie on your other side—the one that hadn't had a blaster bolt fire through it. Ben silently followed, snaking a hand around your stomach and pulling you against him. You squirmed a bit, trying to find a comfortable position in the small bed. After a few minutes of adjusting, you came to the realization that it wasn't the bed or the fact that you were sharing it with such a tall person that was preventing you from sleeping—it was the image of your dead father, seemingly burned into your eyes every time you closed them. Without the aid of medicine, you were wide awake.

For a moment, you considered jumping out of bed and fixing 4-3B’s wires, hoping that he could give you something to ease you to sleep. Unfortunately, Ben’s strong arms locked around you quashed those aspirations. You continued to wiggle in his grasp—as if doing so would magically make the bed more comfortable or erase the memory from your vision.

“You know, it would be easier to fall asleep if you weren’t moving so much,” Ben mumbled in your ear, his warm breath tickling your skin.

By the sound of it, he hadn’t fallen asleep either. You didn’t feel as guilty for squirming anymore. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind. Not to mention that this is the first night without a sleep aid.”

“Hmmm, I see,” he whispered as his hand inched down your stomach, stopping at the fabric of your underwear. “Would it help if I distracted you?”

Heat rushed to your cheeks, as well as between your legs. Was this wrong to do? The infirmary seemed like the last place in the galaxy you’d want to do something like this, but the feeling of Ben’s fingers sliding beneath your underwear effectively pushed aside your logic.

“There’s only one way to find out,” you answered, holding back the desperate breaths threatening to leave your throat as he began drawing circles over your clit.

“I’d be more than happy to,” he whispered. His other hand wrapped around your throat, tilting your jaw up to face him. “Just tell me what you want.”

Before you could answer, he captured your lips in a kiss as slow as honey. Gooseflesh erupted across your skin as his fingers continued to work. If there was one thing you were not expecting about surviving a near-death experience, it was this. The way your body ignited at the touch of someone you thought you would never see again. Being held in his arms made your head spin, dizzy on endorphins. Even more intoxicating was the feeling of his erection pressing into you.

“How’s that, baby?” he asked, his lips moving down your neck. 

It was splendid, incredible. But instead of detailing how his fingers were quickly pushing you towards release, all that came out was a string of soft moans. 

A low groan rumbled in his throat in return, his hips rolling into yours. The hand around your neck crept down your chest, gently squeezing your breast. The pressure building in your belly grew as he rolled your nipple between his fingers, erasing any thought from your mind that wasn’t about the pleasure wracking your body. This certainly cured your restless mind.

“Just like that. You feel so fucking good,” you panted, arching your back into his hips. The sensation of him against your ass was delicious, making you crave more.

“Yeah?”

“Mhm…” You were completely lost in his touch, a puddle of flesh and bones in his arms.

His lips grazed the shell of your ear as he whispered in a sinful, low tone, “Are you going to come for me?”

That alone was nearly enough to send you over the edge. You nodded, grinding into his hand, greedy for more. Slowly, one of his fingers teased your entrance, barely dipping into the warmth of your cunt.

“Okay, next question,” he said, his lips curling into a smile against your skin. “Do you want to come now or wait until I’m fucking you?”

“The… second… one…” You pushed the words out between shallow breaths, focused on the inferno blazing in your core. The string was about to snap, sending you towards pure bliss, but before you could chase it, Ben pulled his hand away to free his cock from his underwear. 

“Pull your panties down,” he growled as he fumbled with his shorts. 

Head spinning, you obeyed, biting down on your lip as you willed your injured arm to cooperate. You managed to kick the fabric off and returned to your former position, sticking your ass out for him. The ache between your legs was becoming vicious���nearly painful. You were half-tempted to finish with your own hand, but before you could, Ben aligned himself with you, dragging his cock back and forth over your cunt before pushing inside.

A low groan rumbled in his throat as he rocked his hips slowly, his hand migrating to grab your hip. His lips seared your skin as they moved down your neck, leaving behind a trail of wet kisses. “Fuck, I missed you.” His words were soft but powerful—like butterfly wings beating through the air. Coupled with his steady thrusts, you couldn’t help but wonder what meaning he had assigned to them.

“I missed you, too,” you said, twisting your neck to see him. With eyes squeezed shut and lips parted, he looked like an incarnation of divinity. Your heart flipped in your chest.

Mustering up all of your strength, you reached up and cupped his face, fingers grazing his cheekbone. A familiar feeling clawed its way to the forefront of your mind, a feeling you didn’t dare say aloud—let alone right now.

Just then, Ben’s eyes fluttered open. You shoved the thought back into the depths of your mind. Darkness consumed his brown irises, but his gaze was soft. “I don’t know what I would do without you,” he muttered before pressing his lips against yours.

As he kissed you, his fingers returned to their previous work, igniting the fire in your belly once more. You moaned into his mouth at the sensation, relishing how your skin buzzed as he fucked you slowly.

Long, soft breaths left your lips, and as he added pressure to your desperate clit, the blinding white light of ecstasy pierced your vision—distant, but clear. You chased it, your heart hammering against your ribs as it drew closer. “Don’t stop, I’m so close–”

Ben’s pace quickened as he neared his own high, pinning you against his chest. “I won’t baby—shit, you’re so fucking tight.”

Within you, the coil snapped. Your body was alight with pleasure, head rolling back into Ben’s chest as waves of bliss rolled through you. Endorphins flooded the blank space of your mind, staining your vision with vibrant colors. His breath grew ragged as he continued to fuck you, his thrusts becoming uneven as you clenched around his cock, sending him over the edge.

He buried his face in your neck as he came, obscenities tumbling from his lips as ecstasy ripped through him. Still riding the aftershocks of euphoria, your body pulsed as he peppered kisses along your shoulder, his cock twitching inside you. Your ragged breaths mixed with his as the two of you laid there, swimming in pure satisfaction.

You wrapped your fingers around his hand that was resting on your chest, squeezing it as you whispered, “I don’t know what I would do without you, either.”

“Hmm?” By the tone of his response, it didn’t seem like he had misheard you, but rather that he didn’t understand what you meant. 

As he tucked himself back into his underwear, you rolled onto your other side, wincing as you crushed your arm into the mattress. “I mean, I wouldn’t be here still if it weren’t for you.”

He chuckled. Through the darkness, you could make out the small smile on his lips. “Don’t give me all the credit. All I did was break you out.”

You scoffed. “Let’s not act like I would’ve been able to find a way off of that planet alone.”

“Fine, I’ll give you that much,” he said with a sigh. “All the more reason for me to teach you the basics of flying.”

Excitement and trepidation bubbled in your stomach at the thought of piloting a ship. A massive hunk of metal with the ability to take you anywhere you wanted, completely at your will. There was no denying the allure of possessing those skills.

“Are you sure you want to take on a student like me?”

He sighed. “I’m always up for a challenge.”

Like clockwork, Ben wrapped his arms around your back, pinning you against his chest. Finally, between the feeling of being in his arms and the steady thump of his heart, sleep carried you away.

[smallnetbusiness]

How doxycycline ruined my life?

A popular antibiotic used to treat a variety of bacterial illnesses is doxycycline. But it does have adverse effects, much as many medications. Who would have anticipated that it would send me into such a chaotic cycle, though?  The tetracycline class of antibiotics includes doxycycline. It is often recommended by doctors and is a flexible drug that works for a variety of ailments, from cholera and Lyme disease to more serious ones like acne and urinary tract infections. It works by preventing the bacteria's ability to synthesize proteins, which prevents the development and multiplication of the bacteria. How doxycycline ruined my life? But just because it's used often doesn't imply everyone should use it. It affects each person's body differently, just like any medicine. While many people find relief without any problems, others like myself experience a maze of adverse effects. This emphasizes how important it is to comprehend drugs and more importantly to pay attention to our bodies. Because a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment sometimes leads to unanticipated results. My First Doxycycline Experience I felt like a godsend when I first began taking the medication. My symptoms drastically eased, but the happiness was fleeting. maybe the quiet before the storm? I saw a resurgence of energy and confidence in the first few weeks. The ongoing health problems that had plagued me seemed to be fading. The noticeable benefits were seen by friends and family, and life started to take on a happier tint. Lethargy in the morning, sporadic aches, and frequent aches that had been a normal part of my day were abruptly gone. I felt as if I had been given a second chance at life, and I was anxious to seize it. However, the original glow started to fade as days evolved into weeks. At first, changes were subtle—a stomachache here, an unexpected headache there. I made an effort to brush them off as minor adaptations in the hopes that they would go away as my body adjusted to the drug. But somewhere in the recesses of my mind, a small voice began to raise some doubts. I had no idea that this was just the beginning of a much longer and more complicated tale that Doxycycline had in store for me. The Silent Struggles, its Effects Despite its effectiveness, doxycycline may cause nausea, vomiting, and even photosensitivity in some people. However, are they the only problems? For me, no. My Conflict with the Side Effects of Doxycycline The response from my body was nothing less than a nightmare. Along with the physical symptoms, my emotional and mental health also progressively deteriorated. The Effect on Mental Health Both worry and depression It seems like you're confined to a room with no doors. It was debilitating to be filled with fear and grief all the time. Why wasn't I forewarned about this? Was I alone in this? Speak Up and Seek Assistance Asking questions, expressing worries, and getting second perspectives are all acceptable. My first step towards rehabilitation was speaking out. Recovery and Healing It's a difficult, protracted journey. Nevertheless, each journey begins with a single step. Will you take mine, I did. Acceptance and Forward Motion Although doxycycline briefly stopped my life in its tracks, it also helped me develop my resilience. The comebacks are what matters, not the failures. Why is Doxycycline so well-liked? Several important reasons that contribute to doxycycline's popularity include: Broad-spectrum antibiotic: Doxycycline is a broad-spectrum antibiotic, which means it works well against many different types of bacteria. This makes it a flexible option for doctors treating illnesses for which there is no obvious cause or who are awaiting the results of laboratory tests. Treatment Versatility: Doxycycline is used to treat a variety of ailments in addition to its ability to be broad-spectrum. Its uses are many and range from treating acne and rosacea to treating more severe illnesses including Lyme disease, respiratory tract infections, and even malaria prophylaxis. Cost-effectiveness: Doxycycline is often more economical than certain other antibiotics, making it a preferred option for both patients and healthcare professionals, particularly in environments with constrained resources. Convenient Dosing: Depending on the illness being treated, Doxycycline often may be given once or twice a day, unlike certain antibiotics that call for many doses throughout the day. It could increase patient compliance. Favorable Pharmacokinetics: Doxycycline has a long half-life, meaning it stays in the body for a longer period and requires fewer doses to be effective. Additionally, it successfully penetrates the tissue, which makes it useful against infections in many sections of the body. Antibiotic resistance is a problem for all antibiotics, however, Doxycycline has demonstrated, when administered properly, a substantially slower rate of resistance development than certain other antibiotics. However, Doxycycline has disadvantages just like any other drug. Physicians and patients must balance the advantages and dangers of a medicine's use due to the possibility of side effects, drug interactions, and contraindications in specific medical situations. As with other antibiotics, proper usage is essential to maximize efficacy and reduce the risk of resistance emergence. Conclusion Life is a mystery. Although the trip with Doxycycline was difficult, it forged a stronger me. Keep in mind that sometimes the conflicts we wage turn us into the protagonists of our tales. FAQs Is everyone harmed by doxycycline? No, each person has different side effects. It's crucial to keep an eye on your health and talk with your doctor. How can one deal with the Doxycycline side effects? Medical consultations, support networks, and self-care routines may all be beneficial. Exist substitutes for doxycycline? Yes, a variety of antibiotics are usable. Always get advice from a medical expert before making any decisions. How long does it take for the negative effects to subside? It differs. While some individuals heal fast, others may need more time. You must be patient and give yourself time. Can you immediately stop using Doxycycline? Before changing your medicine, always talk to your doctor first. Read the full article

[johnfuture]

Present Scenario and Growth Prospects for the Probiotic Supplements Market 2027

Technological advancements in the field of molecular biology and gene sequencing are allowing researchers and scientists to develop new probiotic formulas that are tailored to consumer requirements. The global probiotic supplements market is projected to register a CAGR of 15% during the forecast period (2019-2027).

Manufacturers are focusing on product differentiation on the basis of functional properties, multi-strain supplements, unique flavors, new product formats (gummies), and novel packaging formats to target specific consumer groups.

Though probiotic supplements have been largely considered to be beneficial for gut health, their potential side-effects such as nausea and headache still continue to limit sales to a certain extent. However, continued efforts in development of specific probiotic strains with significantly less or no side effects will be an important factor shaping sales of probiotic supplements in the near future.

Key Takeaways – Probiotic Supplements Market Study

North America is projected to be a key market, as dietary supplements industry remains concentrated in the region. Demand for probiotic supplements is gaining a boost from consumer inclination towards alternative health practices and preventive healthcare. Several manufacturers are offering probiotic supplements consisting of bacterial strains beneficial for children as well as adults, in order to target diverse demographic groups. Lactobacillus-based probiotics are widely used to maintain female intimate health, making it one of the most preferred products as compared to Bifidobacterium- and streptococcus-based probiotic supplements. Zero-calorie and sweetener-free tags attached to probiotic supplements continue to play a key role in boosting their demand.

In recent years, the probiotic supplements market has experienced a lot of regulatory backlash. However, rapidly developing preventive healthcare approach and longstanding acceptance of probiotic supplements among consumers, and resurgence of recommendations by health care practitioners for use of these supplements are offering tailwinds to the market growth.

Sales of Probiotic Supplements for Kids to Witness Rampant Growth

In recent past, there has been an increase in number of cases of gastrointestinal-related diseases in children. Such cases were usually addressed with over-the-counter medication, which often caused a few side effects. This has created a highly conducive environment for development of relatively-safe probiotic supplements with certain strains of bacteria that are perceived to be good for children’s gut health. Manufacturers are targeting the highly lucrative kids segment by launching products with unique flavours, colors, and shapes that have more consumer appeal.

Know More About What Report Covers

Future Market Insights, in its new offering, offers an unbiased analysis of the global probiotic supplements market, presenting historical demand data (2015-2018), and forecast statistics for the period, 2019-2027. The study divulges compelling insights on the probiotic supplements market on the basis of end use, bacteria, distribution channel, and region. Based on end use, the segmentation includes women, seniors, and kids. Probiotic supplements for women are expected to account for the highest market share, followed by seniors, over the forecast period.

[foreverxdaydreaming]

I'm pretty good. Covid is breaking out in my country again. What have you been up to?

Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that love,,, I hope you and your family stay safe and well! I know it can be hard to avoid it when you have to work and such, but still, sending all the well wishes out to you rn 🙏🏻❤

Uuhh just been struggling through summer term rn honestly, not up to a whole lot besides uni and occasionally my games (genshin & otome pretty much). What have you been up to these days? 💗

[vampireshmampire]

The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side (ch 2/8)

Guillermo can't remember the last thirteen years of his life. It has something to do with being found beaten half to death on the side of the road three months ago. Although he’s safe now, living with relatives far from New York, the trauma lingers—physically and mentally—and he’s having trouble putting his pieces back together. Everyone says he just needs to give it time, but he may not have much of that left. The past is catching up, and it’s not going to wait for him to remember it.

AO3 Link

The next day, you go to work, because you told your mother to tell your uncle that you would, and you won’t make a liar out of her.

You do it even though your hands start shaking the second you lock the door behind you. You spend the ten-minute walk jumping at every loud noise—this being the heart of a big city, you practically hop to work.

But you make it in one piece and Uncle Marco is happy to see you.

You spend the day filing, and you don’t think about anything but filing. Fortunately, there is a lot of filing to think of. Uncle Marco inherited the business from his father, whose organizational system was more or less “I know where I put it”. Uncle Marco is not very picky about it, but your cousin Alice is, and she said she’d burn the place down the second she inherited before she spent a quarter of her life tracking down paperwork.

So you file. You go one cabinet at a time. You open each folder and sort through the contents. You separate everything out by company—contractors, subcontractors, materials providers—then by type—purchase orders, contracts, bills of sale—and put them in a new folder with the name of the company on the top. Or, more often, find the already existing folder for that company, and put everything in there. Then, you put that folder in the new cabinet, alphabetizing as you go.

It is a level of mind-numbing tedium you could never have possibly imagined, but your mind could stand to be a little more numb. It’s quiet and solitary and if you need to spend three days curled up in bed because your mind is falling to pieces around you, well. The files aren’t going anywhere.

By the time you go home, your brain has been bored into mush, utterly drained of the energy reserves needed to fuel terror or even mild paranoia. You don’t even flinch when people walk too close.

You dare to allow yourself to feel okay.

Which was just asking for it, really.

You stop to get the mail out of your mailbox. You only do it once a week, because it’s never anything but junk.

When you get to your apartment, you shut the door behind you and dump the mail on the side table, on top of the pile of last week’s mail, which is on top of the pile of mail from the week before. You head for the kitchen, mentally sorting through your available frozen dinner options.

There is a slithering sound behind you. You shut your eyes as the pile of letters cascades off the table and onto the floor in a gratingly comedic mail-valanche.

Something goes thunk.

With everything so helpfully spread across the floor, you can see the small package that had been buried deep in the strata. You pick it up, warily.

The label is handwritten. The stamps on the front say this was sent express delivery, overnight—which was a waste of money, because it also says it was mailed three days ago. The name in the upper corner is Nicoli Bronson. The address is in Jersey City. You’ve long stopped hoping for things to be familiar or trigger a resurgence of memory, but the name doesn’t bring a headache, which is your only real indicator that something ever meant anything to you.

Whoever Nicoli is, he really wanted to make sure nothing happened to the package. It's practically laminated with tape, and after thirty seconds of picking fruitlessly at the edges of the tape, you give up and hack at it with the kitchen scissors until you can get it open.

It's a wallet. Battered but sturdy, dark brown leather, absolutely nothing special or noticeable about it at all. There’s no note, just the wallet. You, innocent little idiot that you are, feel nothing but curiosity as you flip it open.

You drop it like it bit you, backing away so fast you bang your hip on the edge of the counter. The wallet lands open, and your own face stares up at the ceiling from behind the little plastic window.

It’s your wallet.

The wallet you had not had the night you’d been found wandering barefoot and bloody down the side of the road on the outskirts of Queens.

Its absence had convinced the police to dismiss it as a mugging gone wrong, despite the amnesia and dehydration and burns and broken wrist and lacerations and—

You run.

You run into the bathroom and you lock the door and you crawl into the bathtub and yank the curtain shut around you.

After a few seconds, you realize that, even for you, this is a bit of an overreaction. Feeling somewhat embarrassed, you creep back out into the kitchen and stare at the wallet, lying forlornly on the tile floor.

You stare at it for nearly five minutes.

Best case scenario: a good Samaritan found your wallet and decided to return it.

 Problem: the address on the license would be New York, not Denver. Nicoli Bronson would have had to ask someone.

 Which meant the most likely scenario was Nicoli Bronson going to your house or apartment or wooden hut and asked where you were, and someone had told him. Someone there had known.

Somehow, someone outside the family knew where you were.

But if they knew where you were, they must know why you were moving. One day, you’d left to go buy groceries or go for a walk or go to work and had never come home. And someone had gone looking for you, found you, found out what happened to you…

And did nothing.

Didn’t try to get in touch. Didn’t try to help. Didn’t even bother to ask for the last month’s rent.

It should feel implausible. You should be thinking ‘no, that’s ridiculous! Nobody in my life would care that little about me!’

You are not thinking that.

You are thinking that your old life must have been phenomenally shitty, and populated largely, if not entirely, by equally shitty people.

You are thinking that you are so very unsurprised.

You pick up the wallet. You take out the driver’s license without looking and place it face down on the counter.

You examine the wallet itself, first, and you are surprised to realize you remember it. This is not as exciting as it might have been, because it’s from before the mysterious thirteen year gap. You’d spent nearly all of your first Panera Bread paycheck on a real leather wallet.

You remember doing it half because you were so excited to finally have expendable income nobody could guilt you for misspending, and half because you felt—with the awkward pride of someone letting ‘legal adult’ go to their head—you were too grown up for the plastic Jack Skellington one you’d bought at Hot Topic when you were fifteen.

On the lower left corner, barely visible against the dark brown leather, is a small dark stain. You scratch at it with a fingernail, but whatever it is, it’s soaked in deep. It’s impossible to tell what it is. You tell yourself it could be ink. It could be oil.

It’s probably blood.

You empty out the wallet. Fifty dollars cash, debit card, credit card, library card, metrocard, a receipt for—

You do a double take. Yeah. Twenty dollar’s worth of Tide pens.

There are rewards cards and coupons and receipts so old the ink has worn away. You find thirty-seven cents and a ten pence coin.

And then, hidden so deeply in the little pocket behind your driver’s license you nearly miss it, a piece of paper, carefully folded. It’s fancy paper, thick and cream-colored, almost yellow. You can’t tell if that’s age or coloration.

You open it carefully, all the same.

There are only four words, hand written in black ink:

To not kill Guillermo.

You set the paper down and stare at it.

It’s small, although not so small that it hadn’t had to be folded several times to fit it into the little pocket. The handwriting is so beautiful and elegant, with so many loops and swirls that it is almost a work of art. It makes the strangeness of the message all the more absurd.  

Your head throbs, a hot red pulse across the perimeter of the back of your skull like a warning shot across the bow of a ship, but you ignore it.

To not kill Guillermo

To instead beat you within an inch of your life and leave you for dead on the side of the road?

You decide that the note is unrelated. Age of the paper aside, the folded edges are softened by time, the creases bitten too deep to be less than months old before you ever left for Denver. And this was your wallet. This was your note, in your wallet. Someone had written it, and you’d chosen to keep it.

Very carefully, not quite touching the paper, you trace a fingernail over the lines, feeling the curls of the still starkly black ink.

Your face muscles twitch. It’s been so long since it last happened without you making a conscious effort, it takes you several very depressing seconds to realize you’re smiling.

The note makes you happy. It had made you happy then and it makes you happy now.

Having the note had made you happy, but you didn’t want other people to know—whether or not there was a legitimate reason for that is impossible to say. You have been hiding so much for so long that even at 19 you thought you may have forgotten how not to hide.

“I guess I’d be happy if someone decided not to kill me,” you say to yourself, as if that makes any sense.

You dare to pick up the driver’s license and look at the address.

4488 Tremont Lane Staten Island, NY 10311

Staten Island. You lived on Staten Island. You had lived on Staten Island, in a house—no apartment number--with a group of people who didn’t give a shit about you.

The world blurs as your eyes fill with tears. The tears are unexpected—despite all that you’ve been through and all your fear and paranoia, you haven’t cried much.

The droplet that falls free from your face to land with a very soft plap on the plastic is a deep, dark red.

Too late, you realize the hot pain of the headache has made it all the way around from the back of your brain to the front, burning straight into your sinuses.

You drop the little card, and—panicked at the thought of even the slightest damage coming to the first thing to make you smile in what feels like centuries--you jerk open a drawer, and sweep the note inside. You lurch your way to the sink and hang your head over it as the blood comes pouring out. In seconds, the sink is a crime scene, a grizzly monochrome (diachrome?) Jackson Pollock of stainless steel and red.   

You have learned, through trial and error, that all you can do is wait it out. It’ll last for fifteen to thirty minutes, and no amount of nose pinching will make a difference. You can spend that time kicking yourself for being an idiot. It didn’t take long to make the connection between the headaches and your attempts to remember, but you spent the first two weeks turning yourself into a cheap Carrie cosplay every other hour until you figured out that the headaches were only part one.

You’d made a point after that to be careful. You’d let yourself try and remember, but you’d back off when the headaches got past a certain point. You don’t really want to know what happens after nosebleeds.

You’d gotten really good at skirting your limits, right up until you got distracted mooning over a vaguely threatening nonsense note.  

You try to stop thinking about it so you won’t pass out from blood loss. Instead, you think about the worst case scenario, the one you have been trying to ignore, and how plausible it might or might not be.

You pull your phone out of your pocket and, head tilted awkwardly sideways, you google Nicoli Bronson Jersey City. You come up with nothing. There was a Nicoli Bronson in Hoboken, but the photo is as unfamiliar and un-headache inducing as the name.

When your nosebleed stops, you will pack your wallet back up. The post office will be closed, but the Fed Ex down the street will still be open. You’ll take the whole thing down there and send it back, and you’ll include a note.

Wrong Guillermo de la Cruz.

The best-case scenario is a good samaritan.

The worst-case scenario is that whoever had done this to you has found you, and wants you to know it.

[dabacahin]

Black coffee

“Take it slowly, Danny. No need to take this diet change too far. If you’re not suffering from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), you can continue to enjoy your cup of joe every morning. So you can control your sugar and cream levels, maybe just take it black.”

— from H.’s email, September 5, 2022

As H. kindly and wisely suggested, I had black coffee for breakfast this morning. First time. Black. No sugar, no cream, no milk. No ifs or buts. Once you go black, you never go back? Ha! I might just find out starting today.

I had woken up at 7:30 feeling that same ol’ heaviness in my head, unrelated to my high cholesterol, as the doctor said. Last night, I had gone to bed early because that heaviness made me want to just lie down and sleep. And so when I woke up this morning, I thought, why not black coffee?

Can’t remember who but someone once told me that coffee eases her headache. That got stuck in my head, though it wasn’t for that reason that for most of my life I have been drinking one cup of coffee with sugar and cream every morning. Just force of habit, I guess. For most of my life that has been my daily total coffee intake.

For most of my life. Seems I’ve been using that phrase in emails and conversations quite often lately. For most of my life—as compared to what? Now? The rest of my life? Such time frames in reference to calibrated adjustments. All these tiny and often pesky tweaks I am making now because of new (or newly resurging) quirks or beyond-normal spikes in my latest medical test results. All these numbers that have prompted doctors to say, “Based on these results, you will need to do this and take that, cut down this and amp up that, to avoid adverse or lethal consequences.”

Yep, tell me about it. Results and effects. Causes and consequences. Numbers. Diagnoses. Possibilities. Treatment options. Lifestyle changes. Or what the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) booklet on lowering cholesterol calls TLC, “Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes.” Oh yes, those too: changes. Ah, these changes. Hard to live with them, hard to live without them.

I am neither overweight nor hypertensive nor diabetic. Not a smoker, not an alcohol drinker. No GERD or acid reflux. But at my “advancing age” (oh well, let’s face it, this 59-year-old apparatus is slowly falling apart), I need to continue exploring options in healthy (low-cholesterol, low-sugar, low-salt, low-fat, low-MSG, low-delight) diet. But maybe the delight is not in what’s in my diet or how it tastes. Maybe it’s in how I respond to all these changes. Maybe yumminess is overrated. Maybe yummy is all in the head, just like this lingering vague heaviness in my head, about which I’ve been told, “If it persists, you may need to consult a neurologist.”

Ah, but before we go there, I am trying this option. Black coffee. So this morning I finally stepped out of my comfort zone of once-a-day caffeine laced with sugar and cream. And how was it? Fine. Bitter at first, but getting better with every sip. Not as delightful as the kind I have been used to, but it will do. In life, and in time, we learn to do without. We learn to surprise ourselves with every inch of new territory we explore, with every loss we learn to live with. We learn to live with the unknowns and discomforts and incompletenesses. We manage well enough.

And maybe that’s it for me for now: enough. I am not depriving myself of coffee and other goodies (hello, chicken sandwich and cheeseburger). I am not starving myself as I go full blast in my anti-cholesterol adventure. As with just about anything, I am taking it one day at a time. One bite or sip at a time.

So did the heaviness in my head ease up with my first intake of black coffee? Not really. But the pain or discomfort is no longer so palpable, so burdensome. And that is enough. I am content knowing I can take coffee, black or in any shades of brown or white, as often as I want to. I am content knowing I am neither caffeine-addicted nor caffeine-sensitive. There are worse things to be in this finite life, with this aging body.

Happy to know I can still surprise myself. I can still take some (fairly safe) risks. I can still stretch some limits. I can still revisit old pleasures. I can still discover new ones. This old dog can still learn a few new tricks. This low-maintenance life of mine can still get high on a few new (fairly safe) kicks. I am not age-proof, but I am aging OK.

Last Saturday, I was again happily browsing at a secondhand-books shop and found a slim hardcover simply titled “5.” It asks this one big little question: “Where will you be 5 years from today?” In one spread, in huge letters, it also asks: “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” I say, Today.

Yes—surprisingly, gratefully—today.

[punkpoemprose]

December 15th- A Convenient Arrangement Part 7

Universe: Canonverse Arranged Marriage AU Rating:T Length: 4309 Words A/N: Anna gets to let it all out. This is the Anna and Elsa conflict that I wish they could have included in the movies, because as wonderful and kind and forgiving as Anna is, everyone has a breaking point. I thought this was going to be 10 chapters. It’s looking closer to 13-15 I think, but we’ll see how much I can squeeze in going forward. I have 4 days to write 10 more fics, and I work two of them... and I have a zine yo put together...we’ll see how this goes!

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6]

She’d woken in his arms when sunlight flooded through the cabin’s front windows, warming her face and informing her that it was time rise once again. She’d kept her eyes closed despite it, pretending that she was still asleep. She just wanted to listen to his breathing and the beating of his heart for a little longer. She just wanted to be close and know that his holding her so tight was purposeful because she knew that he was awake and was trying to not wake her.

I’m not a good person.

The thought was not self-deprecating so much as it was chiding as she laid in bed with him for another half hour at least, feeling the rise and fall of his chest beneath her and trying not to flush when his hands would move across her back or tuck away a stray hair. It felt strange, but wonderful to be cared for.

She knew that she shouldn’t have pretended to be asleep, but she could never remember waking up and feeling quite so safe as she did in his arms. Moments of tenderness like that was not something she was used to and so she’d allowed herself to indulge in it, and he hadn’t commented even though she suspected that he knew after a short time that she was awake.

They’d had a light breakfast, and he’d helped her redress herself in the soft morning light. She thought that she may remember the deft way he’d adjusted her corset lacing for the rest of her life. He’d asked her if she’d needed help, and while she didn’t really, she’d consented because it was easier with help, and because she was curious about whether he could manage it with only her spoken instructions. She’d felt warm when he’d expertly tugged and tied, explaining sheepishly that he was used to ropework and that he hoped he hadn’t hurt her.

She knew now, after their night alone, that he’d never hurt her. At least not on purpose.

He’d never hurt her the way Hans had.

The quiet morning had continued on the wagon ride back to Arendelle. They hadn’t spoken of anything of consequence since the night before, occasionally breaking the silence with a comment about their surroundings or the weather, but otherwise enjoying the easy silence that no longer felt uncomfortable between them. They would have plenty of time to talk, but they both had seemed to enjoy the lack of questions and heavy conversations for a while.

The calm had ended after they reentered the castle gates, at least for her. She wasn’t certain about how things went for him because they’d been separated too quickly for her tastes.

He’d gone to care for Sven, not entrusting the sweet reindeer with a groom was something that Anna understood now. Sven was as much his family as the trolls were, as she hoped she was. Kristoff felt a duty to care for the creature himself.

Anna, however, had been quickly corralled into her sister’s office, where the day quickly became anything but quiet.

“What were you thinking?” Elsa said, her voice high and the anxiety not at all hidden.

Anna thought that the temperature in the room was maybe ten degrees lower than it was in the hallway just outside the closed door. Her chest felt tight at the realization, and her headache from the night before, when her memories had been returned to her seemed to resurge slightly, a dull hum of discomfort behind her eyes. She clenched her jaw and tried to focus on something else, the wall, the window, anything but her angry sister.

“I left you a note,” she said after a moment’s thought, “I was thinking I was spending some time with my husband.”

Elsa wasn’t calmed by this though. She shook her head and scoffed, giving Anna a look of annoyance, or maybe disappointment that burned through her, like she was being given a forcible internal frost burn from the coolness, even as she tried to look away from it.

“Did you not learn anything from Hans?”

Her hands balled into fists at her side. It wasn’t a question. It was an attack. This wasn’t a meeting, it was an interrogation.

And Anna wasn’t going to back down from it.

“Have you learned anything about what happens when you try to control my life?”

It was a snipe, but she wasn’t about to let Elsa judge her, Queen or not, for trying to get to know the husband that she had forced her into marrying. Elsa had all the power in deciding how they were to handle the fallout after everything with Hans, and instead of trying to find another way to calm the populace, she’d consented to a royal wedding. She’d asked Anna if she was comfortable with it as an afterthought, after the wheels were already in motion, and while she’d seemingly felt bad about the whole thing, it still wasn’t lost on Anna that her sister had once told her that she couldn’t marry someone she just met, and then all but forced her to do the very same.

“Or do you get to blindly pass judgement because you have a crown now?”

Anna saw the ice forming on the windowpanes behind her sister’s desk. The summer scene of gardens and green grass behind her suddenly covered with thick ice marring the sightline. Anna had been looking out to the stables out of the corner of her eye, taking comfort in knowing that Kristoff wasn’t far off. It probably wasn’t a good sign that she felt more comfortable with him than her own sister already. Really though, despite being a stranger, he was giving her a chance to know him. Elsa hadn’t afforded her the same chance, making her all the more the stranger.

“This isn’t about me,” Elsa hissed, “This is about your reckless behavior. You should have taken a guard with you. He could have…”

He could have killed you.

She might have entertained the thought before the trip. In fact, she had, but as reckless as it may have seemed to others to trust him, she knew that she had nothing to fear from him. He’d never meant her harm of any kind, not from the very start.

He wasn’t a man of manners or class or breeding. He was a simple ice harvester, and he’d helped her stand strong at their wedding, he’d not forced himself on her on their wedding night, he’d given her so much of himself, and he’d been nothing but gentle with her.

It wasn’t a long play. It was a kindness. It was something like love.

She thinks he could have killed me.

It was laughable, but she wasn’t laughing. She was raging inside, her heart pounding, and her head aching from the tension in her jaw.

“You could have!” Anna shouted in return, “And I should thank you by the way for your restraint, given that I just recently found out that you apparently almost killed me once before too. Why didn’t you tell me before Elsa? Was it just one more thing you didn’t think I could handle?”

Elsa’s brow furrowed, the fire was still in her eyes, but it was mixed with confusion.

“I take it a troll visited you last night to let you know where I was. Well, I had a lovely time with them, and apparently, I knew about you and the ice and everything until I was five and mother and father had them take the memories from me. I understand why, but what I don’t understand is why you never told me. You knew Elsa, and you never told me about it, or about what you could do. The person who put me in the most danger here is you!”

The room continued to cool, the ice on the windows grew thicker and Anna could see from the angry set of her sister’s jaw that she had struck a nerve.

“So yes, I took a chance to leave and spend some time with my husband. Last I checked I’m not a prisoner, and neither is Kristoff so we decided to leave, you know, enjoy life outside of these walls for a little bit given I haven’t been outside them in thirteen years. Maybe if you were that concerned about him I don’t know, potentially wanting to kill me, you wouldn’t have let the council force a wedding.”

“That’s enough!”

Anna saw the flakes in the air. She knew her sister was at her breaking point, but she couldn’t help but keep pushing. Elsa had gone straight for her most vulnerable point as soon as she’d entered her office, and Anna wasn’t going to take it without dishing it back out.

“Is it?”

She stomped across the wooden floor that was quickly accumulating ice and snow from her sister’s inability to hold on, getting into her face. It was probably a bad idea, but she couldn’t help it. She’d rather get it all out now than keep holding it in. She wasn’t going to spend the next thirteen years of her life knocking on her sister’s door begging for her attention, she was going to take it whether Elsa liked it or not.

“Because I don’t think it is. I don’t think this is enough, because I’ve got news for you. You’re talking to me like I’m a child, and I’m not. I know because I spent every day of my childhood watching days and months and years pass alone, wanting nothing more than someone to spend the time with. I might have made a mistake, but right now the score isn’t anywhere near even Elsa, and I’m not going to take this from you. Kristoff isn’t Hans and if you compare them one more time so help me…”

It happened in a flash, the room went from icy cold, snowy, crusted with ice, to bright white, and then, back to normal.

Elsa fell apart, crumbling as she started crying, in front of Anna.

I’m a horrible sister.

No. This was necessary.

It hurts to hurt someone you love.

She shouldn’t have pushed so hard, was her first thought. Then, shortly after, as she lowered herself to the floor and wrapped her arms around her crying sister, the ice Queen of Arendelle that she’d reduced to tears, she realized that it needed to happen. Even if it hurt them both, she needed to let it out. If she hadn’t it would have eaten her alive.

“It’s okay,” she said, letting her sister cry into her shoulder for the second time in as many weeks.

“I’m not angry anymore, I just needed to get it out,” she said, holding her tight as Elsa started to shake in her arms, hyperventilating as she cried.

“I’ve been so mad for so long, and it took getting my memories back to figure out why… Elsa I know that it wasn’t your choice when we were kids, but I’ve been alone almost my whole life and Kristoff…”

“I’m so sorry.”

It was a wet, nervous sound when she spoke, filling the space as Anna searched for the words to describe exactly how she felt about her husband. It surprised Anna to hear her sister apologize, assuming that she’d want her to leave as soon as she found a voice to tell her to get out. It was what she’d come to expect of Elsa, even when she was being contrite, that she never wanted Anna to stay with her for very long.

“I knew you were lonely. I knew you needed me, but I was too afraid of myself to let you in. If I’d just talked to you more… if we’d just left the castle, maybe you would have never…”

“I know,” she said, stopping her before she could bring up the situation with Hans, “Just… I need you to start trusting me. You haven’t even talked to me since the wedding. You’ve never even had a conversation with Kristoff. You can’t just assume the worst of him.”

She was doing the best she could to keep her voice low, soft, and reassuring. Despite the frustration she had and still felt toward the crying woman in her arms, she also loved her sister dearly. She was all the family she had.

Except now you have Kristoff too.

She wished that her sister could have seen the way he’d held her when she was fighting through her headache, or the way that he took her hand and gave her signals and avenues to express her discomfort or fear. She wished that she could see the way he sometimes looked at her like she was something precious. Maybe then she’d have been less worried. Maybe then she’d understand.

“I didn’t want to,” Elsa sniffled, “At least I didn’t mean to think that about him right away. But I didn’t know when you were coming back and there were no guards with you, and then there was a troll in my office. Anna I didn’t know what to think.”

It took her almost a full minute to get the whole thing out, the sniffling and choked up tone of her voice making it difficult for her to speak and be understood.

“Think that I learned my lesson and that I’m safe with my husband. I wouldn’t have left alone with him if I didn’t trust him. It’s not like before, I’m not blind.”

“But he’s a stranger.”

“Not to me. We’ve been together for a short time, but he’s no stranger to me. He’s a…”

He’s a man I’m falling in love with.

“He’s becoming a dear friend. I think you’d like him Elsa. He’s got a good heart.”

***

When Kristoff had finished removing Sven’s tack, he’d brushed the reindeer. The he’d fed him, sat with him for a short time, and mostly waited for Anna to return. After what felt like an hour, he forced himself up from the hay bale he’d seated himself on and left Sven’s quiet company for the castle. He’d hoped that Anna would have returned after speaking to her sister, but he supposed that even though she’d told him they didn’t have any duties as a couple for the week, she might very well be too busy to spend time with him now that they were back at the castle.

He’d done his best to keep his head high despite feeling foolish walking through the halls. He’d pretended that he wasn’t lost and snuck Anna’s map from his pocket surreptitiously, running his fingers over it to find his way back to his room.

On his way he’d even managed to ask a maid if she would be able to have a lunch sent up to his room. It felt like something that he shouldn’t have asked, feeling no more royal or entitled as he had before leaving, but also wanting not to return to the kitchens himself. There had been something about being in the space that had made him feel even more like he hadn’t belonged.

Maybe it was because you were beneath even the potato peeler last week

He was in his room now, changing his shirt into one of the clean ones he’d grabbed from his cabin, along with most of the rest of his belongings that fit into one small bag. He heard the knock, and shouted that it was open, knowing it was probably his lunch, but hoping that it was Anna.

“Sir, my apologies, but I believe I encouraged you to get to know Anna better this week,” Kai said as he entered the room, shutting the door behind him, “Not kidnap her to the mountains leaving nothing but a note behind. The Queen was in hysterics… which I should inform you, you do have dinner with her tonight.”

“Dinner with the Queen?”

“As arranged with your wife I believe. She’ll also be in attendance I believe.”

He cursed under his breath, catching a both amused and disapproving look from Kai as he did so. He thought that the heavyset old butler might get along well with his father. He often made the same face.

“I should inform you that you shouldn’t curse in response when invited to dinner with a Queen, but I suppose you already know that. I’ve been in the service of the young Queen for many years, and I believe she trusts me, so I hope it is not a breach of that trust when I say that last I saw her she was not particularly pleased with you.”

“Of course not,” he said, feeling underdressed in the comfortable shirt.

Feeling underdressed next to the butler probably isn’t a good sign for me.

“Don’t mistake me sir,” he added, “I think that it has everything to do with her worries for her sister. If you assuage those I think that she would be perfectly happy to meet your acquaintance.”

Kristoff huffed. He did feel bad for taking Anna away from the castle. He knew that his Uncle had spoken with the Queen, but if he’d thought a bit more about the way he and Anna had gone away beforehand, he probably would have been able to avoid this whole situation. He didn’t want people to have to worry about Anna when he was with her. Least of all her sister.

Her sister who could have me executed if she wants.

“How would I manage that?”

Kai set a tray he’d been carrying atop a table in the middle of the room. Kristoff couldn’t help but think that the man might be doing more for him than he was strictly tasked with insofar as his level of interest in his getting into the Queen’s good graces. He told himself that it was probably because he wanted to see Anna happy and safe given the many years he spent looking after the sisters.

He was happy to have someone to help him regardless. He didn’t think he would be capable of navigating the rules and manners required to not blunder through the rest of his life in the castle without it.

“Well to start,” he replied, “We’ll need to find you something proper to wear to dinner. You have a tailors appointment tomorrow morning, but we’ll have to make do until we sort that out.”

Kristoff couldn’t help but feel like he should be insulted, or at least a bit peeved over the man’s words, but he couldn’t manage it. All he could think of was holding Anna while she was pretending to be asleep that morning and doing anything to see her smile. Doing anything to make her sister believe that he’d meant no harm in taking her to the mountains so that he’d not be under scrutiny every time he spent time alone with his wife.

***

Anna had taken it upon herself to arrange the whole thing. She felt a little bad about the amount of time that it was taking to set her schedule for the week and speak with the kitchen staff about what she wanted for the dinner she was arranging in hopes that her sister would be comforted by meeting her husband in a more significant way than watching their wedding. At least she hoped that the meeting would allow the two to come to some sort of understanding.

I only have two people. If they could just get along that would be ideal.

With all the running she’d been doing she hadn’t had a chance to return to Kristoff. She’d heard that Kai had brought lunch to his room, and after that she assumed that they were busy. Kai was her sister’s most trusted advisor, even though his official position was castle steward, Elsa trusted him with aiding her in crucial decisions beyond its walls. That Kristoff had his council just went to show that there was hope, and that at least someone else was invested in making things work.

She spent the rest of the afternoon deciding what to wear and receiving and writing thank you letters for wedding gifts that had been pouring in from merchants and allied nations. Most of whom had already been in town for Elsa’s coronation and who had not had the time to select a well thought out gift after the rush of events the small country had experienced.

She’d waited until just shortly before the dinner was to start to walk through the halls and to the dining room, finding neither Kristoff nor her sister on the way.

“My apologies your majesty. I hope you understand I’ve never needed to inform anyone of my travel plans in the past, and it was not my intentions to worry anyone by taking Princess Anna into the mountains with me. In the future should we decide to go anywhere together I’ll ensure that you are informed directly.”

Anna recognized the voice of the man standing in the hall outside the dining room. The man addressing the queen, but so neatly dressed she barely recognized him as her husband. He looked much like he had on their wedding day. Clean shaven with his hair slicked back. The clothes he wore were simple, but they’d been pressed and someone had taken the time to tie a cravat around his neck.

Kai no doubt.

That man has been wearing cravats for years, in style or not.

They hadn’t noticed her coming down the hall, or at least she didn’t think that they had given that neither made any sign of noticing her approach.

“You must understand,” Elsa said back, seeming in much better shape than she had been hours earlier, “With everything that happened with Hans I worry about her. I’m sure you’re a good man, but you can’t fault me for being cautious.”

He gave her a strange look and Anna’s heart started to pound. She hadn’t spoken with him about Hans. Being in the mountains for the whole debacle, she’d suspected he hadn’t known all the details, and for now she wanted it kept that way. Her feet felt frozen below her though, as Kristoff responded in confusion.

“I’m not really sure I know the details,” he said quietly, “I’m sure if I did I would have thought twice about taking her away from the castle alone. No one has told me much of it, even if it was the reason for our wedding.”

Elsa shook her head, looking anxious, but then recovered.

She took a deep breath and Anna wanted to run down the hall, to speak up, to tell her that it was something that she and Kristoff would discuss later, when she was ready.

“Hans…He tried to kill us both.”

***

He noticed her after her sister spoke. She looked white as a ghost at the end of the hall, and he understood why. Her sister hadn’t exactly been vague when it came to telling him why she’d been worried about him taking her into the mountains.

Hans. The foreign prince. He’d tried to kill his wife and her sister.

He’d thought that maybe the real reason for the wedding had just been that Elsa had lost control of her powers and that to build confidence in her ability to rule a royal wedding was planned to comfort the masses. He supposed now that it was just part of it, that the real reason was more complex, and that it all came down to the man that Anna had known before him.

He wasn’t sure of how to react. All he knew was that Anna’s eyes were on him and that she looked upset. Crossing the hall to her was instinct, as was giving her his hand, offering it to her open and outstretched.

She walked forward instead, into his chest, and into his arms as he wrapped them around her. She had every right to be upset, as did her sister he supposed as he felt even greater regret for taking Anna away without warning. So he did what he thought was best, what Anna was showing him was best. He held her close.

Elsa cleared her throat after a moment.

“I think…”

Kristoff turned his head, not releasing Anna to look at her sister. She was staring at them, her cheeks flushed and an almost smile on her lips.

I think she might understand now.

“I think dinner is ready. I’ll just go ahead… Anna… Kristoff, whenever you’re ready. I think we have a lot to discuss.”

When the dining room door closed behind her, leaving them alone in the hall, he turned his full attention back to Anna, holding her tight, leaning his head down low, and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“It’s alright,” he said, because that was all he could think to say. “It’s all going to be alright.”

“Who made you wear a cravat?” she asked, quiet with her face against his chest.

“Kai.”

She made a soft sound, almost like a laugh but not quite.

“I thought maybe. Can I take it off for you? You look uncomfortable.”

He nodded, and she stepped back a bit out of his arms, giving him room to duck down for her.

Her small fingers slid along the collar of his shirt, loosening the knots of the offending cloth and then, unexpectedly, running her fingers through his hair, mussing it a bit before pulling the cravat away and allowing him to stand back up again at his full height.

“There,” she whispered, taking his hand with the cloth between their palms, “You look like you again.”

The color had returned to her face and he smiled at her. She liked him as he was, and that was a comfort.

Now to convince her sister.

[consumedkings-archive]

WITCHING HOUR, a john seed/deputy fic.

chapter eight: the living sea of waking dreams

word count: 10k

rating: m for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop, tags will be updated accordingly.

warnings: emotional manipulation/some weird humiliation tactics (joseph is a fucker), some weird/uncomfortable relationships getting dredged up, john is a jealous little shit. some spooky scaries go on, blood and body horror (i think? tagging just to be safe).

notes: we've got some ~things~ going on here in this next chapter. i feel really excited about where this story is going and how we're going to get all these little threads put together, but mostly, i hope you enjoyed this chapter! we've got a lot going on but i promise, it will all (hopefully) be worth it in the end. and also, a tiny reprieve: some soft elliot, as a treat, because we deserve it.

thank you to everyone reading and giving me your feedback!! i love hearing from yall <3 special thanks to @shallow-gravy​ and @vasiktomis​​ for listening to me slog through this chap : ))))

“Knock-knock!”

Isolde took in a deep breath, closing her eyes and willing patience to the forefront of her mind. It had only been an hour or so since she’d left the chapel, Joseph’s words ringing in her head, a death knell.

Not after the things I’ve done for you.

Even still, even now—he knew how to get under her skin. She thought she’d never wanted to kiss and throttle someone in equal amounts, in the entirety that she had known them; to think that once, she had let Joseph take her in an embrace, sweep the hair from her shoulder and bury his face in her neck and whisper sweet things into her skin.

He wasn’t the same, anymore. And neither was she.

“Come in, Santiago,” said Arden, from where she had set up her little space across the cabin’s modest room. The heater on the floor rattled laboriously, clicking and chugging away. Isolde swept her eyes over Arden’s space—a small makeshift bed on the couch, the table stacked with a few books and a notepad she was scribbling dutifully on. Isolde had politely offered her the bed, even though she didn’t want to, and the woman had waved her off and said it was no trouble at all, that she often fell asleep on the couch at home anyway.

It was still weird, thinking that someone was—with Jacob. For a long time. But, she supposed if there was any Seed boy she thought would be in a long-term relationship, then—

The door to the cabin swept open, revealing the dark-haired boy from before. Well, perhaps not boy, but young man. Certainly too young and good-looking to be wasting his time with the likes of Eden’s Gate, wasn’t he?

“You don’t have to babysit me anymore, do you?” Arden asked, not once looking up from her writing.

“No, no. Unfortunately, our time together has drawn to a close.” Santiago lifted his arms, spread in defeat. His eyes, a vibrant blue, turned to Isolde. “I am actually here for you.”

“Me?” Isolde’s eyes narrowed. “For what?”

“Joseph has asked me to fetch you.”

“And you’re a good boy, so you do whatever he says,” she replied tartly.

Santiago flashed a grin that was all teeth-pearly, perfectly bleached teeth. He was far more groomed than any of the others she’d seen trawling about the compound. “I am nothing if not loyal, princesa.”

Isolde sighed, passing a hand over her face as a headache began to fester and bloom behind her eyelids. She thought she might have been more willing to kick up a fuss if she thought it was worth the drama—but it probably wasn’t. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Joseph was right; she couldn’t be of any help to them if she was being contrary just for the sake of her own spite. Even if she didn’t know where Joseph got off summoning her like she was part of the peasantry.

“Coming,” she sighed, picking her coat up off the bed and sliding it back on over her shoulders.

“A sweet word, coming from even sweet lips.”

“Alright, Romeo.”

She trudged out after Santiago in the snow, casting a quick glance around the compound. Though evening had fallen, the fluorescents surrounding lining the edges of the compound cast a cold, brutal light across it, highlighting every single pore of the place, every ragged inhabitant shuffling into their bunkhouse as watch switched and folks went to retire for the evening. Some of the roofs sagged with the weight of the snowfall, which trundled on without any kind of end in sight. Isolde couldn’t remember when she’d seen real, unadulterated sunshine last. In Georgia? Had it been that long?

None of it was anything like what John had told her. Of course, she had expected some differences—the man liked to embellish, to be sure—but the members of Eden’s Gate seemed to have lost their fire. They were wayward, adrift at sea, among waves of freezing cold water and what now seemed to be a resurgent threat that they had hoped to be rid of.

And Joseph, having comforted them so very little.

“Icy,” Santiago warned, offering her his hand as he opened the door inside with his other one. “Careful.”

“Thanks,” she muttered dryly. She took his hand anyway, pulling herself into the sputtering warmth of the chapel where—at the front—the silhouettes of Jacob and Joseph stood.

The two of them were suffused in a warm amber glow, but there was nothing warm about the mood in the room; the closer she got, she could hear Jacob’s insistent words—the firm, assertive gestures of his hands, the words, just didn’t feel like it was pertinent at the time, coming out of his mouth—the more she thought, I shouldn’t be here for this. Whatever they’re arguing about, whatever it is that’s gotten them to this point, I’m not supposed to be here.

Joseph didn’t respond to whatever it was that his brother was saying, but instead turned to look at her as she approached down the center aisle of the chapel. Despite the rattling warmth coming from several heaters placed throughout the chapel, Isolde felt a chill sink deep into the marrow of her bones.

“Thank you for coming,” he said by way of greeting. He lifted one hand and beckoned her forward when her feet slowed.

“I just hope this is something I need to be here for,” Isolde ventured cautiously, her gaze flickering to Jacob’s face. The redhead’s expression was drawn tight and hard, and not the way it normally was; it wasn’t calm and focused, but strained, like he was holding himself back from saying something to Joseph that he thought he might regret later.

She had never known Jacob to bite his tongue very much, but from her own experience with Joseph, well—he was apt at bringing out the worst in people.

“Did you know?” Joseph asked when she had finally come to a stop. “About my brother’s...” He wet his lips for a moment, his gaze darting across the empty space of the floor as he looked for the word he wanted to say. And then he landed: “Pursuits?”

Isolde blinked. “If you mean the woman he says is his partner—”

“Yes,” the blonde interjected, before she could finish—a thing he knew that she hated but he seemed unable to refrain from doing. “I do.”

Sol’s eyes narrowed. When she turned her gaze from Jacob to Joseph, she was greeted with the typical unreadable expression; as untroubled as the blue sky over a sunny sea.

But there were storm clouds. Somewhere, in there, on a horizon Joseph would not let her reach now and perhaps had not ever.

“I only knew of her today,” Isolde replied after a moment. “After we saw our little hunter out in Fall’s End, I imagine he felt it pressing that he retrieve her sooner rather than later.”

Joseph made a low noise. It was like a hm, but threatening. Hm, he said, interesting, that. But what it was he felt was so interesting about that particular line of information, Isolde couldn’t only venture a guess; and if she had to venture a guess, she would have said that it would probably be that he felt it was interesting that something was going on that he had not been aware of.

If there was one thing that she knew about Joseph, affirmatively, it was that he did not like not knowing.

“Isolde, why are you here?”

A familiar spark of anger lit, hot and fetid, in her belly. “Pardon me?

“Why are you here? In this compound? In Hope County?” Even as he spoke, Joseph’s gaze was fixed on the eldest Seed, the lines of his face peaceful and serene despite the idle venom burning in the timbre of his voice. “What did John send you here for?”

The anger burned up into soot, into dread, and sat just there, curled at the base of her neck. Isolde could not shake the idea that she had been brought in here to make a point, and that she really shouldn’t be there—that this was something Joseph and Jacob needed to settle between themselves, but that was never how Joseph had operated: fair had never been a stratagem in his playbook.

“Isolde,” Jacob said, his voice a low caution when she looked at him, shaking his head very slightly. It’s not worth it, he was saying, fighting, it’s not worth it.

“Joseph, this,” she plunged on pointedly, “is not something that I need to be a part of. I’ll go, so the two of you can—”

But when she went to depart, Joseph lifted his hand and pointed at her and ground out between his teeth, “Stay. Put.”

The poison in his voice was so potent it almost made her flinch. Almost. And then the indignation started to bloom: who do you think you are, to be talking to me like that? But they wouldn’t come; the words wouldn’t come, because when she lifted her gaze to Joseph’s and saw him looking at her, it was—

“I want you to say it, out loud, in front of Jacob,” he continued, the muscle of his jaw flexing viciously. “Tell him why John needed you here.”

Jacob said, raising his voice a little, “We all know why—”

“Because you are useless unless you are aware of what’s happening. Every detail. Isn’t that right?” he prompted. “Isolde?”

She felt her molars grind. It was clear, now, why he had asked her here. “Yes.”

Joseph turned his gaze to Jacob. “Is that what you want us to be? Want me to be? Ill-informed?”

The redhead was silent for a long heartbeat. He sucked his teeth, and said, “No, Joseph, I don’t—”

“No. More. Secrets.”

The blonde’s voice had pitched so low that she nearly couldn’t hear him, so close and low and intimate was it that he was speaking to his brother, so little space between them. Joseph looked to be controlling himself quite tightly; so very little of the leash available to himself, digging the choke chain deeper and deeper into him in an effort to remain intact.

“Joseph,” Jacob began, “I only—”

“A whole year?” the blonde bit out viciously. “An entire year you spent devoting your time to this—this—”

Isolde was familiar with the precipice at which Joseph was teetering. Right on the edge of saying something vicious and mean and unendingly cruel. She had pushed him there a few times before, in their brief few months together—had seen the way he pulled himself back time and time again, seconds away from grinding out some wretched insult.

“I won’t,” Joseph bit out, lifting a hand as though to temper himself, “tolerate it, Jacob.”

Silence stretched between the three of them for a moment, pulled taut as a rubber band. Though she knew why Joseph had wanted her here—to make a point, but also to put someone there to witness the verbal lashing—looking at the two of them now, she felt more than ever like an intruder on a world she knew so very little about.

John had done nothing to prepare her. He had given her the rosy version of the story, and even that included the cult and the killing and the residents of Hope County. It still hadn’t been enough.

The silence broke when Jacob said, “I understand, Joseph.”

For a second, there was nothing; just Joseph, sweeping his gaze over Jacob for a long moment, like he was trying to wring out any deception or sign that Jacob was being disingenuous—and of course, he could find none, and that meant there was only the tense, uncomfortable silence wadded up between them, in their own fists.

Finally, Joseph said, “That will be all,” and turned, tilting his face to the lukewarm light of the candles at the front of the chapel and closing his eyes.

The eldest Seed lingered for only a moment longer before he left; his eyes met with Isolde’s for a heartbeat before he made his decision, turning down the center walkway and heading for the doors. It wasn’t until they clicked shut that Isolde felt a tiny bit of relief—if only because the source of Joseph’s ire had now departed, and she could get a better look at him.

It was her job to make sure things were under control. John had asked her here for that exact reason—and this kind of in-fighting would be the kind of thing that would, eventually, be their unraveling if they didn’t get it under control. She had only seen Joseph so angry once before, almost over a year ago now, back before he was the Father of Eden’s Gate. Back when they had been—

There are things that I want to accomplish, and they’re best done with a wife—

“Joseph,” Isolde said, leaving the memory somewhere else—somewhere dark and deep she would never find it again, “what’s going on?”

The blonde did not open his eyes when he replied, “I cannot have secrets kept from me.” After a moment, he added, “And in that vein of thought, I should get in touch with our wayward brother.”

“Do you really think it’s that big of a deal?” she prompted again. “To have started a fight with Jacob over a woman that he—”

“Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” His eyes fluttered open, the flicker of dark lashes illuminated by the amber glow, and he tilted his head to look at her. There was a hardness in his voice when he said, “God is perfect in knowledge, and I cannot be less. Not when He speaks directly to me.”

An unpleasant little thrill crawled down her spine when his eyes fixed on her, darting over her face like he wanted to savor her. “Then don’t use me as the whip you want to lash your brother with,” she snapped. “I’m not a humiliation tactic. You do know better than to do that to me.”

Joseph let out a little sigh. The corners of his mouth ticked upward, the shift in mood almost palpably changing the energy in the chapel—just like that, it was different. Not lighter, not better, but different.

“You’re right,” he agreed after a moment. “I do know you better than that.”

Isolde’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Deciding to forego that comment, she took a step forward, cinching her jacket in more securely around her waist. “You know what you cannot be, Joseph?” she asked. “You cannot be fighting with your brothers. Especially not the only one that’s here. Your people out there are disgruntled, and scared, and you can’t afford to be picking fights with the people who are the most loyal to you.”

“They are all,” Joseph replied, “loyal, Isolde." And then, after a moment of watching her: "Is this what you want to be doing? Herding us? Mothering us?”

“My professional opinion is that the image of your convent is severely lacking,” she bit out, once again ignoring the bait, “and the last thing you need to do is have them noticing that there’s a rift forming between the ones in charge. And yes—that is the only thing I can do for you lot at this point, and like an idiot, I agreed to come here and do it.”

Because I can’t say no to John, something tired inside of her said. Because I couldn’t say no to any of you, even if I wanted to.

The blonde reached up, and it took that gesture for Isolde to realize how closely they had drifted—it was so little effort, so little time between the movement of his hand and the time at which his fingers made contact with her cheek, brushing the hair away from her face and tucking it behind her ear. He moved so confidently and leisurely that Sol couldn’t think to pull back; and when she didn’t, the calloused fingertips trailed down the pillar of her throat, his eyes following their journey.

It was intimate; too soon her brain said, even though it had been so long since they had been in the same room, let alone regarded each other in even a passive capacity. But it was too soon enough that her brain fizzed out, the air moving thick as molasses in the journey between her mouth and lungs, the violent flashback of their closeness overwhelming her.

She said, “Joseph,” in a don’t kind of voice, and he dropped his hand from where it had come to a stop at the juncture between her neck and shoulder.

“It was smart of John, to ask you to come and shepherd us in his absence,” Joseph said, blithely ignoring the desperate little barb in the way Isolde said his name.

“I always thought you’d make a perfect Mother.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It had been several days since their conversation in the hallway that night, and John had barely seen hide nor hair of Elliot.

Honestly, it would have been impressive how quickly she could make herself inaccessible, were it not so frustrating. He couldn’t help but wonder what the implications there were—had she known she could do this all along, and had been indulging in him for some reason? Had she simply decided to be done and that was it, meaning that she hadn’t been done before?

Not that she was done now, anyway. Not if John had anything to say about that. But for a few days, she barely spared him a glance—passed him in the hallway when she got home with a muttered greeting on occasion. She woke before him, left to the stables without him, and left him alone in the house. Left him alone without her venom, without her eyes on him. With her mother, no less.

Scarlet was, on paper, exactly the kind of woman that John felt confident in his ability to charm. Single, wealthy by inheritance, a little older and always with a martini in hand by ten? If he couldn’t impress her, he had to be doing something wrong. But in a way that seemed to be very typical of the Honeysett women, Scarlet remained veritably unimpressed and even disdainful of his presence—even though she had insisted he stay with them.

More and more, he was becoming convinced that it was not going to be to his benefit.

“Good morning, Mr. Seed,” Scarlet greeted him from where she sat at the table, perusing her magazine. Not once did her eyes lift to meet his, and not once did an ounce of enthusiasm enter her voice. “You are missing from the stables again today, I see. Not a horse person?”

“I might find myself to be one,” John replied with a leisurely sort of bitterness, “if Elliot would only allow me to come.”

“Yes, it’s very annoying, isn’t it?” The blonde mused idly, over her cup of coffee. “To not be handed exactly what you want when you want it?”

He sucked in a sharp breath, pouring himself a cup of coffee and trying to remind himself that this was all temporary. This house, this town, Scarlet and Sylvia and Wyatt—it was all temporary, and soon enough they would be the least of his concerns. All of his time and attention would be wrapped up in Elliot and the baby, and what their lives would look like once the end had come.

Because it would come, and then she would see. She would understand that everything he’d done had been for them, for her and their baby and—

“I only want to spend as much time with her as I can,” he replied, managing to keep his tone pleasant. “Before I go back home.”

“And when are you?” Scarlet idled. “Going, I mean?” And then, in what he could only think was a stretch of graciousness: “Not that you’ve overstayed, because I am sure you would never, and Delia is quite taken with you—”

“Surely.”

“—as is Elliot, despite her best efforts to act otherwise.”

“What?” John’s head snapped to where Scarlet was still browsing her magazine, and he cleared his throat at her arched brow to try and gather his scrambled thoughts. “What I mean is, has she—said anything to you about me?”

The blonde at the table, swathed in her silk robe and curls primly pinned back away from her face, made a sound that might have been amused. Might have been, anyway, had he not turned to look at her and seen the way her face remained serene and unexpressive.

“I am not blind, Mr. Seed,” Scarlet idled. “It takes very little investigation to find that my daughter is fond of you, against my wishes and her own.”

Before John could open his mouth to respond—and press for more information while his stomach did victorious little somersaults—she turned her head to the window, when the sound of a vehicle rolling up the drive spurred Boomer on to barking in the front room.

“Oh, would you look at that,” she murmured with a little sigh. “My prodigal child, returned home at last.”

He glanced out the window to see an unfamiliar car pulling up, a black truck that took the fresh snow of the unplowed drive to the Graves-Honeysett home with ease; from the driver’s side hopped a familiar face.

“Didn’t Elliot drive there this morning?” he asked, frowning as he watched Wyatt jog around to the passenger side despite Elliot’s waving from the front for him to stop. The man had been nothing but polite—even enthused—to meet him at the bar the other night, but that didn’t mean John had forgotten the way he’d gotten comfy enough to try and touch Elliot’s face and her hair. Even now, the man grinned, all sunshine, as he opened the passenger side door for her and offered her his hand.

Scarlet replied, her attention already having departed the window, “What a silly question to ask out loud, Mr. Seed. You're not stupid, so I would beg you—try not to give me that impression.”

His eyes darted to Scarlet for a moment, briefly grateful that she wasn’t looking at him to see the spark of irritation winding its way across his face; he could feel it furrowing his brows, drawing his mouth into a hard, tight line. Setting his coffee cup on the counter, John made his way out the front door just as Wyatt and Ell were nearly there.

“Oh, hey John!” Wyatt greeted him. His eyes swept over him briefly. “Boy, you’re really put together any chance you get, huh?”

“You can never be overdressed,” John replied as amicably as he could. “Watch the steps, Ell, they’re—”

“Icy, I know,” Elliot said. She puffed out a little breath of air and brushed his offered hand aside, instead favoring the railing with one hand and the top of Boomer’s head with the other, still refusing him the courtesy of meeting his eyes. It had been days. She had never once held such a grudge against him—not really, not where he couldn’t at least get her to give him the time of day.

“Where’s the Jeep?” he asked, his voice coming out a bit tighter than he would have liked as she brushed past him. “Surely you didn’t have Wyatt ferry you out here for fun.”

“Tire’s flat,” she snipped. “Would you prefer I walked?”

“You could have called.” He took in a sharp little breath, willing the accusation away. “I would have been more than happy to pick you up, Ell.”

“Don’t have a cell phone,” Elliot replied flatly. “And Wyatt was already there.”

“It wasn’t any trouble,” Wyatt interjected hurriedly, smiling at John with pearly whites on display. “I had to come into town anyway, and it was gonna be hours before the mechanic could get out there.”

“Well, it was very kind of you all the same,” John said with a smile that felt like it pulled too tight across his face, a smile that was harder and harder to maintain with every passing second that Wyatt West put his baby-blues on Elliot. And that was often; the blonde looked a little sheepish when his gaze met John’s, drawn away from the redhead who was readily retreating into the house.

“Like I said, wasn’t any trouble. Always happy to help,” the blonde insisted, hands tucked into his jacket pockets.

“Yes,” John replied pleasantly, “I can see that.”

Wyatt blinked, flushing. “Anyway, uh...Have a nice day, John. And you too, Freckles!”

He waved before turning on his heel and heading back to the truck. As soon as the driver’s door closed and he was starting to pull away, John turned to see Elliot watching him, her eyes narrowed.

“‘I can see that’?” She scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, are we talking now?” His brows lifted, head tilting. “So kind of you, to grace me with eye contact when you’ve been storming around the last few days—”

“Don’t be a fucking baby,” Elliot snapped. “My life does not revolve around you. Especially when I can’t seem to figure out why the fuck you drove all the way here just to sulk around.”

“Perhaps it should at least be in my orbit,” John replied tersely, “considering that we are having a child together.”

“You—”

Elliot sucked in a sharp breath, clamping her mouth shut as she looked at him. There was a very brief moment where she looked like she wanted to say something, and very badly, but instead, the corner of her mouth ticked upward and she turned on her heel to walk inside without saying a word.

“It’s a cute nickname,” John continued tartly as he trailed after her. Don't walk away from me, don't, you owe me at least your attention. “Freckles. Do you prefer that one over Miss Honey?”

She closed the door behind her, promptly and without hesitation, letting it rattle in the door frame and in his face. He sucked in a sharp breath, passing a hand exhaustedly over his face.

Impudent. Surly. Ferociously, viciously, wretchedly stubborn. He knew this about her—had known this about her—and yet at every opportunity, she proved his idea of her correct, and he found himself getting more and more frustrated. It wasn’t fair, that even those moments of her attention still felt good, that the sting of her venom held some satisfaction for him, like he was addicted to it.

If she would just, came the thought, rolling over and over. If she would, if she would just, if she would just—

But just what? Just stop being that way? Would he have even liked her if she were not this purposefully obstinate problem to solve?

“No,” he sighed to himself, raking his fingers through his hair. “No, I wouldn’t.”

The reward would just have to be all that much sweeter in the end.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Three hours later, Elliot had forced herself to come to a decision.

She waffled on it for a while—going back and forth as she showered, scrubbing her hair and trying to let the hot water ease some of the growing aches and pains—and did her best to ignore the way something a little wicked chattered happily inside of her at the knowledge that John’s eyes had been sparking with jealousy. It felt immature, to like watching him squirm; more apparent than ever, too, was that old habits died hard.

There was a sick kind of satisfaction that came with finding John’s buttons and pushing them. It had felt the same way, back in Hope County—when he’d been burning with irritation and jealousy that Joseph had gotten her confession, not him, that she wouldn’t tell him what it was, pushing and pushing and jamming her finger into that button until he finally snapped and—

Kissed her.

That’s not what I’m trying to do, she thought, a little defiantly as she looked at herself in the mirror of the bathroom; tracing the WRATH scar, looking down to realize that there was, in fact, a baby bump. Oh, God, wasn’t that something fucking dreadful? Too real, but even still she’d known it was coming—worn looser, heavier clothes. She’d tried so hard not to look at herself in mirrors as of late that doing so now made her feel like she was looking at a stranger.

I’m not trying to get him to kiss me—the opposite, actually, I’m just trying to get him to fucking lay off for a minute—

And yet, as she found herself standing outside of the door to John’s room, her chest felt a little tight and her heart was doing that funny thing it liked to do when he was around; fluttering, leaping against her ribs, begging for attention. Elliot could have argued that it was just muscle memory at this point, that she had spent enough time around John letting him touch her and kiss her and say sweet things into her neck that her body was only working off of its basest instincts, and that was why she was feeling this way.

Clearing her throat, Elliot knocked on the door and said, “John?”

There was the sound of shuffling on the other side, and then his voice drifting to her: “Yes, Elliot?”

“It’s time for my appointment,” she managed out lamely. It felt even more stupid, saying it now, after she’d made such a big show of marching off after he’d committed to his display of jealousy. “Since the Jeep’s still waiting to get the tire fixed, do you think you could—”

The door swung open; John’s eyes flickered over her for a moment, his head tilting just before his mouth curved into a pleasant little smile that was two parts triumph and one part spite.

“What’s this?” he asked. “You need my help with something?”

Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “Don’t be an asshole, John.”

“I would never.” He propped himself up against the doorframe, folding his arms. “Wyatt’s taxi services currently unavailable?”

Already, she was regretting her decision—it had felt important, to have him along, but now she thought maybe she had been too forgiving for having forgiven anything at all.

“The appointment might be the one we figure out the baby’s gender, fuckface,” she snapped, “and since Wyatt’s not the baby’s father, I figured maybe you’d want to come in for this appointment, because it wouldn't feel right not to at least ask if you wanted to. Don’t worry though, I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you.”

“Wait!” The exclamation stopped her mid-turn from his door, the feeling of his fingers brushing the palm of her hand making her jerk out of his reach instinctively. John exhaled through his nose, and when she looked him with narrowed eyes and her arms crossed, he said, “I do want to—I want to come.”

“You sure aren’t acting like it.”

“I—Ell, I haven’t heard the baby’s heartbeat a single time,” he insisted, a little frantic. “I’ve respected that you didn’t want me there the last time, and you know, when I wasn’t here before is another thing, but finding out the gender and getting to hear the heartbeat—” He stopped, sighing. “I’m...”

Though there was a bit of pain stinging in the cavity of her chest at his earnesty, Elliot steeled herself, keeping her expression tight. “You’re what, John?” she prompted. She half-expected another blow-up; I’m the baby’s father, that baby is mine, I deserve this, it’s mine.

But instead, John’s mouth twisted and he said, “I’m—sorry.”

Elliot blinked. Had she ever heard John apologize? For anything, ever? And sincerely? She couldn’t recall a day or time in memory—and though her memory was spotty at best these days, she thought for certain that was something she would have remembered. Even when they’d been going to bury Joey, she wouldn’t let him get the words out.

“Uh,” she said very intelligently, “what?”

“I’m sorry,” John repeated, appearing a little frustrated at having to repeat himself. He shifted on his feet. “I want to come to the appointment. I mean—” And then, in what surely must have been pure agony: “Please let me come to the appointment.”

It felt so odd to hear the words coming out of his mouth that she could only blink rapidly and say, “Um, okay,” before turning and quickly heading down the hall and to the stairs. It had been her intention all along to ask John if he wanted to come to the appointment, to see the baby on the screen and find out the gender together—because despite his petty jealousy over someone he didn’t need to be concerned about in the least, and despite his insistence that he was the only person capable of loving her, she did see him making an effort instead of yanking her all the way to the other side. Even if it was a minute, tiny effort; it was an effort nonetheless.

“We’ll have to take your car,” Elliot said uneasily over her shoulder, pulling on her coat quickly. “And it’s soon, so—”

“Making haste,” John agreed from beside her. He reached over her shoulder to pull his own coat off of the rack. It wasn’t lost on her, then, that weeks ago he had gone to reach for her shoulder and she’d about jumped out of her skin; now, the smell of his cologne and his voice close to her ear was almost comforting, in an entirely self-indulgent way.

If she just broke it down to the piece of John she loved the most—his voice and the way the cologne smelled when it was on him, and the way it felt when his hands traced the scars on her hips, and the boyish grin he’d flash her—then maybe it could work. Then, maybe, things would have been fine.

But that’s not love, something inside of her said, as she made her way out the front door and to the car. John says he loves all the wretched things about you. Did you forget?

No. No, she had not forgotten the way John had kissed her when she had blood on her mouth, or the way he’d said, I would’ve fucked you there, or how it felt when he buried his face into her neck and said her name in a voice so broken she thought she might be holy.

“Too hot?” John asked, and she realized she was sitting in the car—that she had checked out halfway out the door—and they were now down at the end of the drive.

Elliot swallowed. Her face felt hot, and now it was not only because of her mind’s wanderings but also because she had been caught daydreaming.

“No,” she said, sinking back against the passenger seat. “No, it’s fine.”

He watched her for a moment before pulling out of the driveway and onto the street. She took a quick glance around the car; it was older, and sort of a beater. The kind of shitty Honda civic she’d see peeling out on the highway at 3AM because some idiot teenager thought she wouldn’t pull them over if the roads were empty. He’d probably lifted it on his way out of town to keep a low profile.

Her foot nudged something solid as she stretched out. Over the sound of the radio rattling and fuzzing tiredly, she heard a dull thunk. She squinted. It was a book. Unconditional Parenting.

“Jesus,” John muttered, “for a town this small, this traffic is a nightmare.”

“What?” Elliot asked, quickly averting her eyes from the book, feeling like she’d just rifled through someone’s personal drawer. “Oh, um—it’s a tourist town. People come here for the Christmas lights. They do like a whole lighting festival with that big tree in the square every night for weeks before Christmas.”

“And that’s why I can’t find parking.”

“That’s why you can’t find parking.”

He shot her a wry smile, taking a second loop around the square and a bit slower this time. Elliot turned her attention back out the window, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it—Unconditional Parenting. How long had he been reading baby books? Why was he so confident he’d get the chance to be a parent, anyway?

When he finally pulled into a parking spot, he let out a breath of relief. “How are we on time?”

Ell glanced at the car’s radio. “Ten minutes early,” she replied after a moment. “Right on time.”

“Great.” John paused. When neither of them moved to get out of the car, he cleared his throat and said, “So, what do you think?”

“About?” Elliot prompted. “The lighting festival?”

“What do you think baby is?” he clarified. Absently, he worried his thumbnail into the rubber of the steering wheel. “The lighting festival in a tourist town is the last thing on my mind right now.”

“Well, it should be on your mind,” she replied, a little petulant. “I think it’s nice, for the record. All of the vendors come in from out of town and even though the traffic’s a nightmare, it’s good business for the town and everyone’s always been respectful of it. Plus, the lights are nice.”

She paused, and when she looked at John, he was grinning at her. He seemed to be enjoying her firm defense of the lighting festival.

“And I think baby is a boy,” she added after a minute, pulling at a loose thread on her sweater. “Just my gut feeling.”

He seemed pleased by her answer, but if he actually was she couldn’t have said why; it was nearly impossible to read John sometimes, but especially in moments like this, in uncharted waters for them both. She lingered for a moment before she unbuckled and said quickly, “Anyway, we should probably go,” pulling herself out of the warmth of the car and into the chilly afternoon.

She wanted to go back to being angry. She wanted to go back to hating John, to being disgusted by him, to relishing in making him suffer, even just a little—but it was like her brain had reverted back to her neanderthal roots. Baby daddy reads parenting books, makes him a good father.

The sooner the moment was over and done with, the sooner she could go back to wallowing on the ways John had wronged her, instead of the ways he made her happy.

By the time they were back in the room, Elliot sitting on the end of the little bed and John in the chair under a pregnancy poster—Pregnant or thinking of getting pregnant? 3 things to discuss!—she had nearly steeled herself. If she just sat there, and replayed the last three months in her head, and reminded herself of all the reasons why she had left John behind in the first place, she would be just fine.

And then the door opened, and Dr. Harding stepped inside, and looked between Elliot and John with surprise.

“Hello, Elliot,” Harding greeted. “I see we’ve a guest today?”

“This is John,” Elliot said, trying not to sound too miserable given the riotous state of her brain. “This is the, uh—he's the father.”

John stood quickly, holding out his hand. “John Seed.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Harding,” she said, reaching out and shaking his hand. “Excited? Elliot’s told you we might find out the gender today, yes?”

“Yes and yes,” John confirmed, sounding more and more like the kind of man she had fallen for and less like the egotistical psycho she’d turned in to the government. Right, the one that had lied, and coerced, and perhaps knowingly drugged her. She couldn’t afford to forget that bit.

As Elliot went through all of the normal questions—have you been eating well, yes, I see you haven’t lost weight, yeah, how is the sleep, it’s fine—she held on tight to that little thread of knowledge. John was here because she was letting him, not for any other reason, and it did feel good to know that this whole time he’d played by her rules. As much as he could have, anyway, showing up at her house unannounced.

She settled back against the propped back, grimacing as she shimmied the hem of her sweater up and Harding put a generous amount of gel on the swell of her stomach. Between doctor’s appointments, it was easy to pretend like maybe she wasn’t pregnant. The morning sickness had faded, her appetite had come back, she was getting fine enough sleep; if she didn’t look at herself in the mirror, if she ignored the pervading aches and pains, the roundness to her features then she could pretend like things were normal.

But then John pulled the chair over to the side of the bed, his fingers brushing hers, and nothing felt even remotely close to normal.

“Alright, let’s take a look at baby, shall we?” Harding said, settling in as she began to glide the instrument across Elliot’s stomach.

“Okay,” Elliot said, feeling uneasy. John’s eyes flickered to her, and while she chewed the inside of her cheek, her fingers curled around his—a thoughtless, absent-minded gesture, like she was a heat-seeking machine and the only heat that would do was his.

He didn’t say anything, but laced their fingers together just as Harding said, “Oh, there’s baby!”

The dull, steady heartbeat echoed. When she stole a glance in his direction, John’s eyes were transfixed on the screen as Harding went over where the features were, pointing them out on the screen to him.

“Your little one is about the size of a peach right now,” Harding was saying, “and let’s just see here...”

Oh, God, she thought, feeling her stomach roll. It was so real. Too real, to be laying there, after all of this time feeling so disconnected from her own body—like a vessel, but now with John’s fingers tangled with hers and the baby’s heartbeat and a fruit analogy regarding the size it felt too real. She could no longer act like it wasn’t happening.

“It looks like we’ve got a perfectly healthy baby boy,” were the words coming out of the doctor’s mouth when Elliot’s eyes drifted from John’s face. “It might be a bit early, but that's my educated inference. Congratulations, Elliot. And daddy too, of course.”

A boy. A boy. I’m having a boy.

A perfectly healthy baby boy.

The room felt a little like it was swimming, her throat tight and a steady burning behind her eyes and nose. She sat up a little and swallowed thickly. John had come to a stand too, to get a better look at the screen, but when she squirmed and moved he looked at her.

“Ell?” he asked, sounding very far away, or like he was talking to her underwater. His hand not interlocked with hers came up to her face, and she couldn’t find it in herself to pull away—not only because of the effort it would take, but because of the way it felt to have him right there when she thought she needed him the most. “What’s wrong? Hey, baby, are you—”

“I’m okay,” Elliot managed out, her voice thick and wobbly. “I’m f-fine, I just—um—”

I’m having a boy. Oh, God, it felt so fucking real, too fucking real, but in a good way—for once, her nerve-endings felt alive, and not with anxiety and dread but with happiness.

Sounding panicked, John tilted her face up and asked again, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, a wet, raspy little laugh bubbling out of her, “nothing’s wrong, I’m just—I’m just really happy—”

It took his thumb sweeping wetness from her cheek for her to realize that she was crying. Some unshed emotion hiccuped in her chest, and she swallowed thickly, fingers wrapping around his wrist in what she understood too late was an effort to keep his hand there; skin to skin, pulse close to pulse.

I want a home with you, she’d said to him, that night, and he’d looked at her and said, You have it, Ell, I told you.

He’d said, I’m all yours.

He’d said, Take what you need from me.

Dr. Harding was saying something, speaking softly to John. It was another reminder that it had been idiotic not to let him come in the first place—there was something so inherently endearing about John mmhming and nodding along, listening raptly as the doctor went over what they would be expecting in between this appointment and the next while his thumb swept affectionately over her cheek. She was sure that she heard the reaffirmation that she needed to be getting good sleep, staying as relaxed and unstressed as possible, but she couldn’t think about that. Her brain was going on loop, on repeat.

I’m having a boy, she thought, a perfectly healthy baby boy. My baby.

When Harding patted John’s shoulder and said, “I’ll give you two a minute,” before exiting, she felt John’s fingers threading through the hair at the nape of her neck; in a gesture that was painfully intimate, his forehead pressed to hers.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “I can’t believe that—”

“I know,” she said, sniffing. “I can’t either.”

“You were right.” He grinned, their noses brushing, giving her hand a squeeze. So close to a kiss; she felt her lashes fluttering, the warmth of his hand spreading along the slope of her neck. “We’re having a boy. My God.”

Yes. We are having a boy. A perfectly healthy baby boy. Without her permission, the thought populated, permeating her brain.

Our baby.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Yes, I have him right here.”

Staci blinked. A quick intake of his surroundings reminded him that he was sitting in the cab of one of Eden’s Gates trucks—lifted from the F.A.N.G. Center. Footage of him with the cultists—the other cultists—would now be available. Footage of him walking past the corpses of Jacob’s gutted chosen would now be available.

Jacob is going to kill me, he thought, lifting his eyes from the back of the seat to look at Helmi. The woman was watching him as she spoke on the phone, with Dani sitting next to him on the backbench. Helmi had been on the phone with someone for quite a while; he’d stopped paying attention what felt like eons ago. If he just let his brain drift off, he wouldn’t think about the bodies. Fucking God, their bodies—

Jacob’s going to fucking kill me.

Helmi's hand moved. On instinct, Staci flinched, and she rolled her eyes.

“Say hello, doggy,” she said, shoving the phone against his ear. He fumbled with it for a minute before he swallowed thickly.

When he looked at Dani frantically, she frowned, her brows furrowing, and she whispered, “Don’t embarrass me, Staci.”

“Um, h...” His mouth was painfully dry. “Hello?”

“Hello. Is this Staci Pratt?”

The voice on the other end was painfully pleasant. She had the same kind of accent Dani did—Norwegian, maybe, or Swedish—but her voice was a bit deeper, a rich timbre to it.

“I am,” he replied uneasily. “I-I mean, yes. It is.”

Helmi had faced forward in the driver’s seat again and started pulling away from the F.A.N.G. Center, turning the heat down low. As the truck pulled out onto the snowy highway, she flicked the headlights off and slowed to something close to a crawl.

“S-Sorry, but—”

“You do not have to apologize to me, Staci.”

“I just don’t know—um, who you are,” he managed out. As soon as he said the words, Dani dug her elbow into his ribs; he barely stifled the yelp, looking at her as she mouthed something he couldn’t understand.

She hissed, “I told you, she is—”

“My name is Kajsa. Helmi, and your Dani, and many of our brothers and sisters are...” Her voice trailed off, and she made a thoughtful hum. Pratt tried to ignore the way she said your Dani made his heart jump in his throat. “They are my charges. It is my responsibility to take care of them.”

“Oh,” Pratt said. “So what...What do you want with me?”

“Helmi says that you have made a very good impression,” Kajsa replied sweetly. “You have important knowledge, and I want to make sure that you are safe, and taken care of. Just as I would any of the others.”

He fought back a grimace. The words sounded sweet and enticing, but he couldn’t shake the way Dani had looked at the gutted corpses on the screen and said delightedly, It will happen to us all. If we are lucky, Helmi will be the one who does it for us.

Pratt’s gaze darted up to the front. Helmi’s dark eyes fixed on his in the mirror, like she had been watching him all along.

“It is my understanding that the Seeds have not endeared you to their cause? That you know what your colleague did, that your friends have left?”

“No,” he replied quickly. “I mean—that’s right. Um, I was working for Jacob, but it was more like—”

“Do not trouble yourself with recounting. I believe you,” Kajsa interrupted. And then, gently: “It must have been horrible.”

His chest tightened. Oh, no, he thought, shaking his head and pressing the heel of his hand against his left eye. No, fuck no, don’t listen to her, Pratt, you fucking idiot.

“By now you must have some grasp of what is going on,” the woman continued, “but in case you do not, I will tell you. Are you listening, Staci Pratt?”

Pratt’s head pressed against the back of the seat. He didn’t want to; he didn’t want to listen to her sweetness, her sympathy, the way she clicked her tongue and the timbre of her voice warming him down to the marrow of his bones when he felt like he’d been freezing this whole time.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I’m listening.”

“We are well-armed. We are organized. We have a common enemy with you. And a common friend, too.” She paused, and he thought that he could hear a smile in her voice when she said, “I can tell that you want to live, my darling. That you don’t want me to have Helmi pull over and gut you open, leave you for the crows and the wolves and the woods to take you.”

Opening his mouth did nothing to inspire the words to come out of him. Nausea rolled violently in his stomach—but there was nothing left to puke up, even if he’d wanted to.

He did want to live, but not like this. Not terrified. Not. Like. This.

“I want you to live too,” Kajsa murmured on the other end.

“But you’re going to have to do something for me.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When Elliot opened her eyes, it had gotten dark outside.

It took her a minute to collect her bearings, sitting up in a bed in a dark room. At her feet, Boomer huffed and sighed at the disturbance, and then she remembered; she was in her bed. Back at home. John had driven the both of them back to the house, and she’d said that she needed to lay down—and he’d let her, without protest or complaint. He hadn’t even tried to insinuate she could use a napping companion.

Pulling herself out of bed, she rubbed her eyes tiredly and glanced out the window. Everything felt a little foggy. How long had she been sleeping? Had she really been out until late into the night?

She reached absently to her bedside table, blindly fumbling for the lamp switch; after what felt like an eternity of not being able to find it, Elliot sighed and skimmed her hand over her face, looking out the window. The night outside was brighter than it had been in a while, with no clouds in the sky and the moon illuminating the snowy landscape in an unforgiving blue-white, stretching out far and far and far until it hit the treeline.

Something darted on the horizon. She blinked rapidly, taking a step closer to the window and pushing on the glass pane until it started to slide up, grinding laboriously. The longer she looked, the longer Elliot thought maybe she had just been zoning out—but then she saw it again; a flash of something, pale and long, like spider bone-white in color skittering up the dark wood of a tree in the distant treeline.

A glimpse of pale limbs. Tangled, dark hair—she couldn’t make out the color, it was too dark—but it looked wet, it looked matted, like someone had hurt it. Like someone had blown its skull open.

Something metal rattled. The trash can, she thought, her attention snapping to the front of the house. When the sound of metal crashed in the night, the motion-activated light in the front kicked on. A shadow stretched along the snow, cast long and deformed by the warping of the light.

“Hey!” Elliot shouted, but the shadow did not twitch or move in response; just the sounds of rustling, like whoever it was found themselves too preoccupied with digging through the trash can. Her heart was pounding violently in her chest; the terror that had been knotting in her stomach was doused by something hotter, redder, angrier.

Rage.

She pushed herself away from the window and out the door into the hallway. As her feet hit the stairs, there was almost no noise—just the rushing of her movements as she pushed the front door open and hurried down the front steps, turning the corner to where the garbage can sat.

“Hey, listen to me!” she snapped, propelled by the anger when she saw the figure hunched over the garbage can. “You can’t be in—”

The figure lifted its head. From the back, her eyes swept over what looked like fur, a tail, up and up to the back of a head that had two ears perched on it, until the figure’s head turned—

Fury disappeared. It was now only dread, only pure, cold dread and terror sitting in her, gutting her, washing her out as the dog with a man’s face turned and looked at her and smiled.

The square teeth, gapped and pearly, oozed with the same dark liquid as she had thought she’d seen before. In the yellow light from the porch, it glittered dark as garnets, dropping into the snow and spreading out crimson.

Move, she thought, I have to move, I have to fucking move, I have to go I have to run I have to—

“Hey!”

It was her voice. It was her voice, but it wasn’t coming out of her—it was thrown, echoing from somewhere in the trees, the dog with the man’s face spreading its mouth wider. Somehow, she knew deep in the marrow of her bones that It was making that sound.

“Hey? Listen to me?”

The pitch was all wrong. Elliot felt a moan bubbling up in her, and It turned on its hind legs, feet hanging loose around its ribcage, and faced her fully. She managed one step back before It tilted its head, as if to say, where are you going?

“Hey, listen to me!”

There was something else in its teeth. Something else, wiry and golden, and even when she willed herself a step back

(whereveryougowhereveryourun)

her body would not move; she was trapped, frozen, watching as It stepped closer

(ItwillwaitforyouItwaitsforusall)

she realized that it was hair, in It’s teeth

(ITWAITSFORYOUITWAITSFORUSALLITWILLHAVEYOU)

her hair.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and she screamed.

When she lurched and twisted around, she was not met with a familiar face. It was a woman, hair dark and bundled up in winter clothes, watching her with concern furrowing her brows as the headlights of her car made Elliot squint. She immediately jerked away.

“Are you alright?” the woman asked, her hand dropping back to her side. She was tall—she had to be at least six feet tall, and her face was sharp and angular, her eyes nearly black without any light to show their color.

“Where—” Glancing around wildly, Elliot forced a swallow. She was not in front of her house. She was not even close to the front of her house. She was all the way at the end of the drive, standing in the—

“—found you in the middle of the road,” the woman said, the lilt of her accent jarring Elliot back to reality. “I was on my way home when I nearly hit you. Are you quite well?”

Her gaze snapped back to the woman. The dog; where was the dog with the man’s face? Where had she—

Every nerve-ending felt fried, like they had become pure static; she felt like she was vibrating. She stared at the dark-haired woman with the strange, rich accent, wondering why it itched at her. Weyfield was small. Too small for her to not know about someone with an accent living there.

“Who are you?” she asked after a moment, nails digging into her palms. “You don’t live around here.”

A smile stretched across the woman’s face. She had pearly teeth, and the kind of full mouth that looked pretty, sculpted—but in the smile, Elliot only thought, broken glass, her smile looks like broken glass.

Vaguely, she was aware of John’s voice; he must have heard her scream, or seen her down the driveway, the headlights of the unfamiliar car illuminating her in the dead of night. And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling. Paranoia spread along her spine, worming into her lungs, a most effective parasite.

“I know you don’t live here,” Elliot managed out, her voice trembling as she took a step forward. There was a tiny pinprick of relief when she realized she’d regained her mobility. “Why are you driving around this neighborhood? Who are you?”

The woman turned and headed back towards the driver’s side of her car, hands tucked politely into the pockets of her coat.

“You should be more careful of your sleepwalking. Someone else might not have been so kind as to stop,” she called over her shoulder. “And—”

The woman paused, the smile still rooted firmly on her face as she opened her car door.

“I hear stress is bad for the baby.”

Something wretched and vile twisted in her stomach, hot as a branding iron. The panic that shot through her system was so vicious, so potent, that for a second she felt like the air had been sucked out of her lungs; it crashed over her in a wave so powerful that her vision swam and she thought, I’m going to pass out.

But there was another thought, too, squirming around in there, blinking its little emergency light:

My baby, my baby, you stay away from my baby.

“Ell!”

John’s hands landed on her before she thought think to pull away, even if she’d wanted to, as the headlights of the woman’s car turned away and began to drift down the drive. The idea that she ought to chase the car down occurred to her, but the tremble in her legs and the hitch of her breath reminded her that it would only serve to make her feel worse.

The brunette frantically checked her over, panting and out of breath as though he’d just sprinted down the drive; when his hands finally came to a stop, they were cradling her face, his eyes searching hers. Over his shoulder, she watched the receding red light of the woman’s car drifting in the dark, aimless in a sea of inky black, and she wanted to throw up.

“I heard you scream,” he said, breathless as his brows knit together at the center of his forehead. “What are you doing all the way out here? Baby, look at me, what’s wrong?”

“She knew,” Elliot managed out. Her voice felt like sandpaper grinding out of her lungs. “She knew I—she knew about our baby.”

“Who?” John looked over his shoulder, and then back at her, his thumbs smoothing over her cheekbones. “Elliot, who?”

I don’t know, but the words wouldn’t come.

I don’t know who she is,

but she knew about our baby,

and she has a smile like broken glass,

and a mouth as red as blood.

[fanfictionaries]

Oh So Many Years: Ch. 19 - Shoot The Moon

Pairing: Hermione Granger x Fred Weasley

Summary:

Summer has ended and students return to King’s Cross to begin another year at Hogwarts. 

Warnings: Swearing, Death, Smut/18+ NSFW

Author’s Note:

For some reason Tumblr wouldn’t take my formatting like it has with previous chapters. I swear it’s a freaking crap shoot whether it will EVERY time I poster on here. It would be nice to know how that works...

Anyways, please enjoy :) 

Masterlist

<<<Chapter 18

 Summer days are gone too soon

You shoot the moon

And miss completely

And now you’re left to face the gloom

The empty room that once smelled sweetly

Of all the flowers you plucked if only

You knew the reason

Why you had to each be lonely

Was it just the season?

 Hermione Granger was nothing if not a punctual person. At the best of times she was fifteen minutes early and at the worst she was on time. However, she should have known that the Weasley family would want to stick true to their tradition of arriving at King’s Cross by the skin of their teeth. Tapping her foot impatiently as she stood in the busy kitchen, Hermione worked very hard at fighting off a headache. Mrs. Weasley was screaming at the twins for charming their trunks and accidentally knocking Ginny down two flights of stairs and Walburga was screaming because Mrs. Weasley was screaming. She checked her watch for the umpteenth time that morning and ran a hand over her hair. They may not even make it on time at all if they carried on this way, she thought irksomely. Especially if they waited any longer on Sturgis Podmore to show up like Moody wanted them to. The last thing she needed was to miss the train on her first day as a Prefect. Smirking to herself, Hermione stared down at the silver pin fitted snuggly to the front of her jumper and admired it. Prefect. She had done it. Just one step closer to Head Girl.

A tap at the kitchen window brought Hermione out of her musings. Looking up she saw the brilliant, snowy visage of Hedwig. Hermione sighed, striding towards the window, and throwing it open. Hedwig flew in, looking quite flustered for a bird. Perhaps she also knew they were running late. Cursing in her head, Hermione wondered if perhaps her parents had forgotten that today was the day she left for Hogwarts. Why else would they have chosen to send Hedwig back so late in the morning? She took the letter from her parents out of Hedwig’s clutch and then allowed the bird to climb onto her shoulder. The owl’s long talons dug sharply into her skin, holding on for dear life as Hermione sprinted out of the kitchen and up the stairs. On the second floor landing she spotted Crookshanks stalking a stray mouse and scooped him up as well. The giant orange beast squirmed in her arms, putting up a fight but possessing enough respect to keep his claws put away.

 “Oh stop, Crooks. Honestly, you’ve spent all summer doing whatever you please. Just cooperate with me for one second,” Hermione groaned, holding onto her cat even tighter and bounding up the last flight of stairs to Harry and Ron’s room.

 “Sorry Harry! Mum and dad only just sent Hedwig back,” she apologized, walking across her friends’ messy room to place Hedwig in her cage. “Are you just now getting dressed?”

 “Uh yeah, I slept late,” Harry mumbled, buttoning the last button on his shirt, and moving to pull on his socks and shoes.

 Hermione sighed, placing Crookshanks down on the bed and taking a moment to stare critically at her best friend. Harry had mentioned the resurgence of his nightmares earlier in the summer when she found him wandering the halls late at night. She had been on her way back to her room from another late-night library session with Fred, but of course she didn’t tell Harry that. While what her and Fred were doing wasn’t necessarily wrong, there was an unspoken agreement between the two of them that they should keep it to themselves. People just wouldn’t understand.

 However, looking at Harry now, Hermione didn’t need her former knowledge of Harry’s nightmares to know that he wasn’t sleeping well. He had circles under his eyes, and despite Mrs. Weasley’s cooking the past month he still looked too thin.

 “How’s Ginny?” Harry asked, tying his laces.

 Hermione rolled her eyes. “She’s fine. Mrs. Weasley is patching her up in the kitchen. I wouldn’t go down there right now though if I were you. It’s a zoo. Mrs. Weasley and Walburga are still yelling and now Mad-Eye’s complaining that we can’t leave until Sturgis Podmore shows up. Otherwise the guard will be one short,” said Hermione, leaning against the end of the bed and petting Crookshanks idly.

 “Guard?” Harry asked, looking up from his shoes. “We have to go to King’s Cross with a guard?”

 “You have to go to King’s Cross with a guard,” corrected Hermione.

 “Why?” questioned Harry, standing up in an irritated fashion.

 Hermione scoffed, “Why do you think, oh Boy Who Lived?”

 “I thought Voldemort was supposed to be lying low. What, do they think he’ll be waiting behind a dustbin at the train station, waiting to do me in?”

 “I don’t know. It’s just what Mad-Eye says,” said Hermione, fighting to stay calm and sympathetic. She was getting a bit tired of Harry’s moody demeanour.

 Her assumption about Harry’s arrival at the beginning of the month had been correct. Harry had been irate. At everyone, but especially at her and Ron. Luckily, Fred and George swooped in at the right time, just like Fred had said they would. Bless the both of them. Hermione didn’t know how much more chastising she could take, she already felt guilty for not writing to him. She’d apologized at least a thousand times over in the last month, but Harry still had a sour mood and while Hermione had been prone to tears at the beginning, now she was just frustrated.

 “Look, I’m not too happy about it either. Do you think I want to be late today?” Hermione asked snippily, looking at her watch once again.

“Will you lot get down here now?!” Mrs. Weasley’s bolstering voice boomed up through the stairwell and Hermione pushed off the bed with a sigh. She grabbed Crookshanks in her arms once again and headed towards the door. “Are you coming?” she asked once she got to the doorway.

 “Yeah, right behind you,” nodded Harry, looking a bit pink in the face. Perhaps her comment had embarrassed him. Hermione smiled at the thought. It would do him good to remember he wasn’t the only one with problems in the world.

 Hermione hurried down the stairs, running into the twins halfway down.

 “Well if it isn’t our favourite little Prefect,” said George, reaching out and ruffling the top of Hermione’s head. Hermione batted his hand away before reaching the bottom of the stairs and placing Crookshanks in his carrier.

 “I’m not speaking with you two,” she sniffed, looking away from them and instead focusing her attention on getting the finicky latch closed tightly on her cat’s wicker carrier.

 “Oh? Why’s that Hermione?” the two asked in unison.

 “I’m annoyed with you both,” responded Hermione in an off-handed manner.

 “Annoyed?” asked Fred with a shocked tone.

 “With us?” asked George, sounding equally as surprised.

 “That can’t be right—” Fred leaned against the wall beside her and took the strap from Hermione’s hands, latching the carrier closed with ease “—we’re angels, we are.”

 “You knocked your sister down two flights of stairs!”

 “By accident!” cried Fred and George.

 “Yes, well still. I hope you know that I will not tolerate that kind of behaviour once we get to Hogwarts.”

 “I knew this would happen Freddie,” said George, shaking his head solemnly.

 “We really should have prepared ourselves more for this inevitable betrayal,” added Fred woefully.

 “Our little Hermione, a swotty Prefect.”

 “No more fun.”

 “No more laughs.”

 “Oh the laughs we’ve had,” bemoaned George wistfully, throwing himself dramatically onto Fred’s shoulder.

 “You two are ridiculous—” Hermione shook her head, unable to stop the smile from forming on her face “—I told you before. Just because I’m a Prefect doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being fun—”

 “You were fun before?” asked Ron cheekily, entering the hallway with a cauldron cake in hand.

 Hermione scowled at him. “Ha, ha, very funny Ron. You know, you’re a Prefect too now. You should start practicing a bit more civility.”  

 Ron smirked, ignoring her comment, and instead taking a bite of the cauldron cake before going over to stand near Tonks and Ginny.

 Hermione turned back to the twins who stared down at her expectantly, waiting to hear the rest of the speech she’d given at least three times over since she’d received the letter with her silver Prefect pin. “Now, as I was saying. I’m not going to turn into a monster. Just realize that I have an obligation to the school first and I won’t hesitate to reprimand you if need be.”

 “Reprimand, you hear that Freddie?” asked George with an impish expression.

 “Sure did Georgie,” answered Fred, looking equally as puckish.

 “What are you going to do, Hermione?”

 “Give us a bit of a spanking?”

 Hermione blushed, furiously and against her better judgement. But she was more well-versed in the ways of the Weasley twins and so her embarrassment did not stop her from responding like it might have in previous years. Instead, she looked up confidently at the two and tried to put on what she could only imagine was a semblance of seduction. “Only if you’ve been bad boys.”

 The twins balked at her comment, mouths hanging open and ears tinging pink in a fashion very similar to Ron but very unfamiliar to them. Fred and George Weasley did not get embarrassed easily. If they had any kind of response, there was no time for it. A moment later, Mrs. Weasley came into the hallway from the kitchen and Harry came down the stairs. Walburga was still screaming insults from the wall, but all ears were trained on Mrs. Weasley’s instructions on who was going with who to King’s Cross and what to do with their trunks.

 A whirlwind of people, crosswalks, and magical barriers and Hermione was finally on Platform 9 ¾. In a way, Hermione was glad they had walked to the train station. It had given her a sense of control on how quickly they reached the train and she had practically run the entire way, Mr. Weasley and Ron on her heel. Once the stress of getting on the train was gone, Hermione was faced with a whole slew of new worries. Sirius had insisted on coming to the station with them and had done his absolute most to stand out like a sore thumb in his Animagus form.

 “He shouldn’t have come with us,” she said, watching the black dog chase the train exuberantly, as they took off from King’s Cross. The students in the train watched it laughing, and even some of the parents left on the platform smiled at the rambunctious dog. They wouldn’t be so cheerful if they knew it was Sirius Black, escaped Azkaban prisoner, thought Hermione cynically.

 “Oh give him a break. He hasn’t seen daylight in ages. Just blowing off a bit of steam he is,” said Ron, continuing to smile out the window at the dog quickly dwindling in size as the train travelled further from the station.

 “Well, as much as we’ve enjoyed your company these past few months, Georgie and I have some important business with people who well…”

 “—aren’t you lot,” George finished for Fred, giving them a short wave before the pair of them turned and disappeared into the next carriage.

 Hermione sighed, not even wanting to begin to think of the trouble they were sure to get up to. Over the remaining month they’d managed to nearly perfect their line of Skiving Snacks and have an admirable inventory at their dispense. As a Prefect, Hermione tried not to think about it. The less she knew, the better.

 “Should we find a compartment then?” asked Harry, turning to her and Ron looking the most cheerful he had all summer. It made what Hermione had to say next even harder. She chanced a look at Ron who was looking equally as guilty.

 “Oh…Harry. I thought you knew. Ron and I have to go to the Prefect’s carriage,” she said, watching the smile fall from Harry’s face. She looked back to Ron, hoping for some support but he was looking anywhere but Harry, focusing intently on one of the wall-mounted light fixtures as if he were seeing it for the first time.

 “Oh—” Harry nodded “—right. Fine.

 “I don’t think we’ll have to be there the whole time. Just long enough to get instructions from the Head Boy and Girl and then we have to patrol the corridors from time to time. We can still—”

 “It’s fine,” said Harry, cutting her off. He was using the clipped, overtly chipper tone he used when he was trying too hard to sound casual. “I might see you later then.”

 “Yeah, definitely!” Ron finally chimed in. “It’s a shame we have to go down there. I’d rather we didn’t, but…we have to. I guess…I mean I’m not enjoying it. I’m not bloody Percy.”

 Harry smiled again, this time in amusement at Ron’s rambling. “I know you’re not,” he said before waving them off to the Prefect compartment.

 Despite his reassurances that he was fine, Hermione felt guilty for leaving Harry there on his own.

 “He’ll be alright,” said Ron, leading her down the corridor towards the front of the train where the Prefect carriage waited for them. “I’m sure he’ll find Seamus or Dean or Neville or someone.”

 “Oh right…”

 It was easy to forget that they all had other friends outside of their small inner circle. Especially since for the longest time, Ron and Harry were her only friends. At least, her only close friends. Neville was her friend, she supposed. As were Fay and Emmy. She might even stretch as far as to say Lavender and Pavarti were her friends as well. Well…maybe more like close acquaintances.

 “Who do you think they chose for Slytherin Prefects?” Ron asked as they neared the front of the train.

 “With our luck it’ll be Malfoy and Parkinson,” grumbled Hermione, reaching the door to the Prefect’s compartment and sliding it open. It was almost poetic the way the moment the words left her mouth, the opening compartment door revealed none other than the two Slytherins in question. They sat in the corner, side-by-side, looking bored and smug. Their expressions only seemed to lighten when they spotted Ron and Hermione entering the compartment.

 “And I thought being a Prefect was supposed to be a place of honour—” Malfoy sneered, looking her and Ron up and down in a condescending manner “—now that I know they’ll give the job to just anyone, it takes away a bit of the prestige.”

 Pansy snickered.

 “Funny, I was just thinking the exact same thing,” Hermione spat back, staring Malfoy in the eye as she tried to telepathically burn him alive. If ever there was a time for emotion-fuelled accidental magic, thought Hermione, now would be it.

 “How dare you, you—”

 “Now, now—” cut in Roger Davies, a seventh year Ravenclaw and the newly appointed Head Boy “—leave the house rivalry for the classroom and the quidditch pitch.” Davies laughed, but Hermione could see the nervous glint in his eye as he gripped his wand tightly.

 “Bloody git,” Ron mumbled under his breath. Hermione didn’t know whether he was referring to Malfoy or Davies, but either way Hermione felt like it was fitting. The rest of the compartment seemed to feel the same as her, as both the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff Prefects were giving Davies wary looks while trying to create as much space as possible between themselves and the Slytherins. Hermione was grateful to see that the other Prefects were familiar faces. Padma Patil, Pavarti’s sister, was the spitting image of her twin and gave Hermione a small wave as she sat down. Hermione, while having limited interaction with the Ravenclaw, found that she liked her much more than Pavarti as they had a shared interest for learning. Anthony Goldstein, the other Ravenclaw Prefect, she recognized from Transfiguration classes years prior. He also gave them a brief greeting. Ernie MacMillan was there too, and while Hermione still didn’t care for him since his spread of lies about Harry their second year, his presence was soothed by the kind and quiet Hannah Abbott who sat next to him.

 “Now!” exclaimed Helen Monroe, the Head Girl, some time later. They were coming near to the end of their meeting, or at least that’s what Hermione assumed based on the agenda they had been given. Their meeting had taken much longer than either Hermione or Ron had anticipated. Ashamedly she thought of Harry sitting on his own in a compartment waiting for them. Merlin she hoped he had found someone to sit with instead of choosing to mope by himself. Maybe Fred and George had found him at the very least.

 “The last thing on our agenda we’d like to address before handing out patrol and meeting schedules is an issue of favouritism,” said Monroe with a smiling face.

 “Favouritism? What do ya mean?” asked Ernie, sounding affronted as if he’d just been personally accused of the offense.

 “Well, in the past we’ve had issues with Prefects showing house favouritism—”

 “—giving points where they’re undeserved and taking points away to give their house a leg up on winning the House Cup,” chimed in Davies.

 “And we just wanted to remind you that your responsibility is to the school and it’s students first and foremost. So please try and show some sense of neutrality, no matter who is involved, whether it’s those in your house or…family members…” Monroe shot a nervous look in Ron’s direction that Ron missed but Hermione did not.

 For a second she wondered if perhaps they were talking about Harry, given he was so prone to getting in trouble and then the truth of the implication hit her square in the face. Maybe she was spending too much time with Fred and George otherwise, she would have caught on immediately that that was exactly who the Heads were referring to. Hermione wanted to laugh. She almost did. Bringing a hand up to cover her mouth, she faked a cough to try and hide the bout of giggles threatening to escape her chest.  

 They were given their schedules after that. Hermione and Ron had the first set of patrols up and down the train, and so instead of heading straight towards Harry, they meandered down from the head of the train, peaking into compartments, and breaking up little spats between younger students. Ron seemed to take to the position of power quite well. Almost too well in some instances, Hermione having to remind him of the speech they’d just been given about abuse of power in favour of their house. He had been trying to take points from a group of third year Slytherins for being too loud – an offense that Hermione deemed worthy of a simple reminder. They were about halfway down the train, Ron trying to reverse a jelly-legs curse that had been set on a fourth year Ravenclaw by accident, when a compartment slid open and Hermione nearly collided with Angelina Johnson.

 “Oh!—” the Gryffindor chaser exclaimed, stopping short “—Hermione. Hi.”

 “Hi…” Hermione responded awkwardly, unsure of what to say. Suddenly she was very nervous, which was ridiculous because she had nothing to be nervous about! It’s not like her and Fred had really done anything. Intimate? Sure. But in a friendly sort of way. Nothing that when taken into context could be deemed inappropriate, reasoned Hermione. Although, if that were true then she wouldn’t have anything to be nervous about.

 “How was your summer?” the older girl asked.

 The question took Hermione by surprise. Why did Angelina Johnson care about her summer? They weren’t friends, and up until that point Hermione was under the impression that Johnson didn’t even like her all that much.

 “Fine. I spent most of it with Ron’s family,” Hermione said, trying to push past how odd it felt to be having a conversation with Fred’s girlfriend when she was madly in love with him and had spent most of her summer nights curled up on a couch or in his bed with him. In a totally appropriate way of course.

 “I thought you might have. George mentioned one time that you usually visit them during the summer,” said Johnson, nodding and looking nervously around them.

 “How was your summer? I heard you spent it at quidditch camp. How was that?” Hermione asked, trying to bridge the uncomfortable silence between them with polite conversation. Why were they still talking?

 “It was good. Yeah, really good. I learned a lot of…stuff.”

 Hermione nodded, raising her eyebrows in acknowledgement. When Johnson neglected to continue, Hermione glanced back in the compartment where Ron was patting an exhausted looking Ravenclaw student on the back, having just broken the curse. She wished he’d hurry up and save her from whatever was going on right then. Her attention was pulled back to the uncomfortable conversation when Johnson spoke once again.

 “Listen, Granger. Now that I’ve got you, I was wondering…” Johnson paused, seeming to contemplate her next words. “I was just wondering whether—”

 “There you are!” Ron exclaimed, exiting the compartment behind Hermione, and placing a hand on her shoulder. “You know, I really could have used your help in there. You’re much better at counter-curses than me Hermione. Oh, hi Johnson.”

 The older girl seemed to go all rigid and awkward at the appearance of Ron. She shifted from foot to foot and cleared her throat before straightening her position and taking on a completely different demeanour. “Weasley. How was your summer?”

 “Good, thanks. Not as good as yours I imagine. Quidditch camp! That must have been amazing!” mooned Ron, getting a sparkly look to his eye at the thought.

 “Yeah, it was great. Learned loads of stuff that should be sure to put Gryffindor in the lead this year. We need a new Keeper now that Oli, I mean—” Johnson coughed “—now that Wood’s gone. Will you be following the Weasley legacy and trying out?”

 Ron went red around the ears, ducking his head bashfully. “Actually, yeah. I thought I might.”

 “Good. I look forward to seeing what you’ve got,” said Johnson with finality before giving them both a small nod and moving past them down the train corridor.

 As strange as the interaction had been, only one thing seemed to stick with Hermione in that moment.

 “You didn’t tell me you were planning on trying out for the team!”

  Fred reckoned he should have known the minute Angelina neglected to show up to their usual compartment that something was up. Alicia had given some offhanded excuse of Angelina going to scout out compartments for potential quidditch recruits and Fred had bought it at face value. In the past he might have questioned it a bit more, gone looking for his long-time friend and currently girlfriend. But in a way it had been a relief for him to not have to deal with the issue of Angelina the moment he got on the train. He was much too excited to show Lee and Alicia their new products and didn’t want to sully it by breaking up with his girlfriend. It had been a long-time coming. He’d wanted to end things weeks ago but had ultimately decided that he couldn’t do it over letter. Him and Angelina had history and she definitely deserved more than a letter saying ‘Hey, this isn’t working. Mind if we just go back to being friends?’. Not to mention the girl got harder and harder to reach as the summer went on. The last letter she’d sent him had been nothing but a picture of her and the beater for the Holyhead Harpies with the words ‘Isn’t this rad? Missing you lots! x Angelina’ written on the back. And while it was cool, Fred couldn’t help but think that in a way it was a finality to their relationship for him. The two of them had never really been gossipy conversationalists, falling back more on their shared physical activities and the comfortable silence that came with old friendships, but this was a bit too sparse for him. He wanted more. He wanted something different. He wanted…Hermione.

 Luckily after the reveal of their new products, Lee wasted no time in bringing other students into their compartment to show off their goods. Before Fred knew it, he and George were completely immersed in their salesmen roles and so all thoughts of girls and relationships were quickly replaced with galleons, sickles, and knuts.

 By the time he and George had made it to the castle their pockets were significantly heavier and their spirits lighter than ever. They were almost completely out of fake wands, biting teacups, and spitting teapots. They had even been convinced by a group of second year Hufflepuffs to sell some of their Skiving Snack Box products – the sweets not yet fully through trial runs. Fred and George agreed but only if they were willing to report back on the effects. The students were happy to do so as it meant they got the sweets at a discount.

 The next clue that went unnoticed by Fred was the fact that Angelina chose to sit at the opposite end of the table as him at the feast. But Fred had been too excited, telling Hermione all about their sales, to notice. Besides, Alicia and Lee were sitting with her and Fred and George usually sat with their family at the start-of-term feast. Still, when Fred caught Angelina’s eye at the end of the table as the last of the first years took their seats, he found himself panicked at the odd look on his girlfriend’s face. Did she know? wondered Fred feeling the all too familiar summersault in his stomach. How could she possibly know? The only person who knew he wanted to break up with her was himself. He hadn’t even told George, although he suspected that George suspected as much.

 The churning sensation stuck with him all throughout dinner and resulted in him eating very little, something that did not go unnoticed by neither George nor Hermione.

 “You alright, mate? You barely touched your porkchops,” said George, licking the last of his chocolate ice cream from the back of his spoon.

 “Yes, and you didn’t even fight Ron for the last of the custard,” added Hermione, her comment touching Fred as she had remembered custard was the only pudding he really cared for.

 “I’m fine. My stomach’s just a bit upset,” he lied, chewing on the side of his thumb as he stared down at the table, tracing the grain of the wood with his eyes.

 “Maybe you should go and see Madame Pomfrey once the feast is over,” suggested Ginny kindly. Fred shot her an appreciative smile before returning his gaze to the table.

 “Well, now that our stomachs are full and our hearts are warm from friendly conversation, I’d like to take a moment of your time to go over the usual start-of-term announcements,” Professor Dumbledore’s gentle yet authoritative voice rang throughout the hall, pulling all attention to himself at the centre of the staff table. He went into his usual diatribe on how the Forbidden Forest was of course, forbidden, how Filch wanted to remind them that magic was off-limits in the corridors between classes, etc. etc. Lastly, he announced that there would be two changes in staffing: Professor Grubbly-Plank was back to take over his position as the teacher for Care of Magical Creatures, and their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was a woman named Professor Umbridge.

 At the mention of her name, Fred looked down the staff table for the first time that night to see a new addition. A stout, round woman in a garish-looking pink outfit sat where the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher usually did. Despite her loud outfit she had a very unpleasant look about her, decided Fred. Although, it didn’t really make much of a difference to him. They had a new Defense teacher just about every year now and seeing as it was his last year, it really was inconsequential. They were all the same in the end.

 “Hey, I know her,” commented Harry. “She was at my hearing at the ministry.”

 Fred found that kind of odd. What was a ministry official doing teaching at Hogwarts?

 Dumbledore moved on, beginning to talk about quidditch try-outs when the new DADA teacher did something that made her stick out from all the other defense teachers before her. She stood from her seat. Dumbledore stopped, midsentence and looked at the short woman. Professor Umbridge let out a, “Hem, hem,” and Fred thought for a second that he must be hallucinating. Was this woman really interrupting the headmaster to give some kind of speech? More gracious than Fred could ever imagine to be, Dumbledore allowed her to speak and speak she did.

 Her speech was long-winded, full of comments about Hogwarts’s greatness and how the Ministry placed a lot of stake into the education of young minds. It sounded like a lot of hot air in Fred’s opinion and one glance around the room at the other student’s and even some of the teacher’s faces told him that he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. When Professor Umbridge had the audacity to say that she hoped they would all become great friends Fred couldn’t help but utter a sarcastic, “That’s likely” which was mimicked in time by George as well.

 Then she spoke of progress and change and how things must be done for the better and Fred felt an all-new unease take over him. An unease that radiated throughout the entirety of the room for once she had finished and taken her seat, the hall was much quieter than before.

 “Well that was certainly illuminating,” Hermione whispered from beside him.

 “Don’t tell me you enjoyed that shite,” said Ron exasperatedly. “That had to be the most boring thing I’ve ever heard.

 “I said it was illuminating, not good,” sniped Hermione. “It certainly put things into perspective.”

 “It did?” asked Harry. “Sounded like a load of waffle to me.”

 “Yes, well there was a lot of important stuff in all that waffle if you’d been listening,” said Hermione, her mood turning dark. She had Fred’s attention now as well.

 “There was?” asked Ron dumbly.

 “All that talk of ‘progress for the sake of progress’ and ‘practices that must be prohibited’?”

 Ron and Harry shrugged at her, but Fred was beginning to understand what Hermione was getting at. If Umbridge worked for the ministry and believed that changes needed to be made at Hogwarts then—

 “It means the Ministry’s interfering at Hogwarts,” said Hermione, surmising Fred’s conclusion perfectly.

 The room burst into applause, Dumbledore having finished the last of his announcements and then students began to rise from their seats. Ron and Hermione stood, leaving to escort the first years back to Gryffindor tower. Fred laughed with George when Hermione looked like she was about to lose her head when Ron called the first years ‘midgets’. Turning his head away from the squabbling pair, his eyes fell once again on Angelina.

 Fred swallowed thickly.

 If ever there was a time, it was now. He should just do it. Get it over with. Break her heart and hope that they could move on. Trying to find the bright side to it, he told himself that the sooner he ended things with Angelina, the sooner he could begin pursuing Hermione. However, that only left him with even sweatier palms. Standing up from the table, he looked between George and Angelina with the full intent to cross the room and ask his girlfriend to speak in private. But instead,

 “Alright, Freddie!” he announced loudly, catching George off guard. His twin looked up from the conversation he’d been having with Ginny and looked at him curiously. “I’ll see you in the common room. I have a few things I need to take care of first.”

 Before his brother had any time to question what he was doing, Fred flew from the Great Hall and past Angelina, avoiding looking in her direction as he turned the corner and headed towards an unknown direction. He had only gone a little way down the corridor when a voice called after him.

 “George! Wait up!”

 Fred stopped and turned to see Angelina running after him. What could Angelina possibly want with George, Fred thought for a moment as he watched the pretty witch approach him, her long braids bouncing off her shoulders. She looked nervous when she finally reached him. Her hands twisted together, and her eyes couldn’t quite meet his.

 “That’s me, George. What’s up?” Fred asked, wanting to kick himself. Coward. He was a coward.

 “Can I…can I talk to you for a second about…Fred?”

 “What about Fred?” Fred asked, feeling incredibly stuck in the lie he’d created.

 “Um, you know how I was at quidditch camp this summer?” asked Angelina, looking around them and grabbing Fred’s arm, pulling them over to an alcove away from prying ears and eyes. “And you know how Oliver was there?”

 “Yeah…” said Fred, feeling the blood drain from his body. His limbs had gone all cold and his fingers all numb and tingly.

 “Well, something might have happened.”

 “Something? What kind of something?”

 “Like I might have, I guess you could say I might have cheated?”

 “Might have or did? Those are two very different things Angelina,” said Fred, speaking now more as himself than as himself pretending to be George.

 “Okay, I did! I cheated!” admitted Angelina, bringing her hands up to cover her face in shame.

 “With Oliver Wood?!”

 “I know! I know! It just sort of…happened. Oli and I, we’re—”

 “Oh, so it’s Oli now?” asked Fred, feeling his temper bubble.

 “Look, I know you’re angry. I mean, Fred’s your brother after all.”

 Oh, right. She still thought he was George. Well this certainly threw a wrench in things. “Don’t you think this is something you should be telling him and not…me?” asked Fred, feeling slightly confused as he tried to wrap his head around processing the fact that his girlfriend had cheated on him with Oliver Wood, and that she had no idea she was speaking to him and not his brother.  

 “Yes, and I want to, but George. We’re friends too right? And you know him better than anyone. I was hoping you might know how to break this to him as easily as possible,” Angelina pleaded, looking imploringly into his eyes.

 Before Fred could even begin to figure out how to answer that, both his saving grace and downfall came all at once in the form of the real George Weasley.

 “You alright Freddie? What are you two up to then?” asked George, looking innocently between the two of them, tucked into the alcove.

 Angelina looked between George, the real George, and Fred who she now was beginning to realize was the one standing before her. Fred watched as the realization took over her and then how fear replaced confusion in her eyes before she muttered, “Well, fuck.”

 The conversation at that point had been a bit stale. Fred reckoned he might have gotten more answers out of her if George hadn’t come along and blown his act, but it was probably for the best. The more Fred thought about it, the less he really wanted to know. Still, some things stuck with him. What did Oliver Wood have that he didn’t?

 “I mean, it’s Wood!” cried Fred for the tenth time that night, laying face up, wrong way on his bed, head hanging off the end.

 “I know mate, I know,” responded George, continuing to unpack his and Fred’s trunk. A nicety Fred figured he was only giving considering his current predicament.

 “Maybe she’s bewitched or something,” suggested Lee kindly from across the room.

 “Yeah, maybe she’s under some kind of potion or spell. How else could a prat like that land Angelina?” added George.

 “I don’t know, Fred managed to land her just fine,” said Kenneth Towler, earning a round of glares from everyone in the room.

 “Shut it, Towler,” warned George, but he had gotten Fred’s attention now.

 Lifting his head till it was level with his body, Fred looked at the bookish boy with narrowed eyes. “What are you trying to say Kenneth?”

 Kenneth laughed, a short and breathy scoff, shaking his head from side to side. “Have you ever considered that maybe Wood’s just better than you?”

 The room was silent. Shocked at Towler’s words and more importantly in anticipation for how Fred would respond. Fred too was curious as to how he would react. Digging deep within himself he searched for anger, sadness, envy, but he found none of it. Instead, he laughed. A full body, side aching laugh that sent him toppling out of his bed and wiping at tears at the corner of his eyes. George and Lee joined in, followed shortly by Towler himself. When Fred finally calmed down enough to catch his breath he was on the floor, back leaning against the foot of his bed and one knee bent upwards to support his left arm.

 “Yeah, you might be right there Towler,” he sighed, feeling better than he had a few minutes previously.

 Despite his ability to laugh at the situation that night, Fred couldn’t help but mope the next day. Sure, he was planning on breaking up with Angelina as well, but it still hurts to get dumped and cheated on. Especially when the other man was your old quidditch captain. Not to mention, in a way he felt like it was slightly expected of him. In true Hogwarts fashion everyone knew the tale of him and Angelina and more importantly his mistaken identity. It had turned into a bit of a joke really and by dinner the next night people were saying things like “Just make sure it’s actually them and not their twin” when someone planned to meet with someone.

 It wasn’t particularly clever, Fred thought. Surely he and George could have come up with something much better if it had happened to someone else. But it hadn’t happened to someone else. It had happened to him, and he wasn’t about to throw fire to the flame by making a better joke that would surely stick around much longer. That just wouldn’t be fair to Angelina, who was already looking about as miserable as you could. It was clear she was embarrassed and guilty. Several points throughout the day Fred thought about putting her out of her misery and telling her not to feel bad. Maybe if he had been a better boyfriend she wouldn’t have been seduced away by another man. Maybe she could tell that his heart wasn’t truly in their relationship and therefore it was easier for her to be unfaithful. Still, he had been the one who’s heart wasn’t in it and he hadn’t been shoving his tongue down Hermione’s throat all summer. This was a new fact he had unwillingly learned from a few Gryffindor sixth year girls gossiping too loudly in the corridor before dinner.

 Once at dinner and knowing this fact, Fred longed for distraction. Glancing around he noticed that Hermione was noticeably absent. Of course she would be gone on the one day he needed the comfort of her ability to go on and on about whatever subject he asked her about.

 “Say, where’s Hermione?” Fred asked Ron and Harry as casually as he could.

 Harry shrugged but Ron answered, “Library maybe? That’s where she was last I saw her. You know how she gets.”

 “Maybe I should go get her? Make sure she doesn’t accidentally miss dinner,” Fred said, standing from the table.

 George gave him a knowing look. “Is that all?”

 “Dinner is the most important meal of the day Georgie,” said Fred, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

 “I thought that was breakfast,” said George back, smiling now.

 “Yeah, and I thought you weren’t a huge dickhead. I guess we’re both wrong.” And with that Fred spun on his heel and exited the Great Hall.

 Fred made it halfway to the library when he began to notice something very odd. The air had begun to thicken, a layer of fog soon surrounding him. Very shortly after his shoes started to make a wet splashing sound with every step. Looking down the corridor through the hazy fog, he realized that the floor was covered in water. A few steps further in and he realized that it was beginning to deepen. Something brushed his left hand and Fred jumped, spinning quickly, and pulling out his wand only to find a cattail. What was a cattail doing in a Hogwarts corridor?

 “Lumos,” he muttered, the tip of his wand glowing brilliantly and illuminating the corridor ahead of him. But he did not see a corridor. Or at least not the corridor he expected to see. No, instead the hall seemed to be transformed into what could only be described as a swamp with an expanse of still water covered by lily pads, cattails, and moss-covered logs. To top it all off, if he focused hard enough and held his breath, Fred could make out the croaks of toads in the distance.

 “What?” muttered Fred aloud in confusion.

 “Oh no, you weren’t supposed to see it until after dinner with everyone else,” whined a voice from behind him. Fred spun, his wand illuminating the face of Hermione Granger. She stood a few feet away, hands clasped behind her back as she frowned in his direction.

 “You did this?” he asked in shock.

 Hermione’s frown quickly morphed into a very proud smile and she nodded enthusiastically. “It’s a portable swamp. I’ve been working on it all summer. It was supposed to be yours and George’s Christmas present – you know, for the business.”

 “Why?” asked Fred, unable to really form full sentences from shock.

 “I heard about what happened with Angelina and I figured you might need some cheering up. I was hoping you’d get to see it for the first time when everyone else found it, but this is nice too. At least this way you won’t accidentally fall into it. A foot further and the water depth drops to about four feet,” she informed him casually, although the smug expression on her face told him she felt very proud of herself.

 Fred took a quick step away from the water and towards Hermione, not wanting to chance falling in. He stared at the witch before him, wide-eyed and speechless.

 “Do you like it?” Hermione asked, looking a bit nervous now as he had yet to make any real comment on her brilliant invention.

 Like it? He loved it! It was probably the nicest gift anyone had ever given him. How could he even begin to express how grateful he was? He was so happy he could kiss her. In fact…

 Fred leaned down, wrapping his arms tightly around Hermione and lifting her off of the ground as he claimed her mouth. The kiss was hard and overly enthusiastic at first, but in almost no time they were swept back into the memory of their first kiss all those months ago and they melted into each other like there had been no time between them. A single continuous kiss that went on for seasons. A kiss that Fred never wanted to end as he held Hermione tightly and snogged the living daylights out of her. Unfortunately, the kiss did have to end. A distant murmur of voices sounded from somewhere near by and they broke apart panting. Hermione’s lips were red and swollen and parted in a surprised expression when he carefully placed her down on the ground. They took a moment to just stare at each other, both surprised and delighted in what had just happened. But then the voices grew louder, and they knew they had to go. Fred held out his hand, raising his eyebrows expectantly. Hermione took it firmly, smiling bigger than he’d ever seen. Then they were off, running down the corridors and away from the scene of the crime. Through the halls of stone floors, ancient tapestries, and regal portraits they ran, laughing like school children. Which in a way, Fred supposed they still were.

Taglist:

@theworldisugly-22

@aoonai

@sjh-07-10

@is-it-madness

@i-d-e-g-a-f

[tsuki-chibi]

Passionfruit (November) Day 3: Lace

See the full story on AO3: Passionfruit

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“Okay, so that’s three macarons, one croissants, and half a dozen choux à la crème,” Marinette said breathlessly, popping back up above the counter. She dropped the box down for her maman to ring up and turned to the next customer with her best smile in place.

“Can I have one of those cakes?” the customer asked, gesturing to the wall above Marinette’s head.

“Sure!” Marinette chirped, grabbing another box. She carefully went up on her tiptoes and grabbed the cake the customer had pointed to.

‘How’s your day going?’

Two weeks ago, the sudden voice inside of Marinette’s head would’ve made her trip. The cake would’ve ended up all over the floor if she was lucky, and on her head if she wasn’t. Today, the blip was barely enough to make Marinette twitch. She concealed a proud smile as she set the cake inside the box. Slowly but surely, she was getting used to having a soulmate.

‘It’s okay,’ she answered mentally, pulling the lid down on the box. She slid it across the counter to the next customer.

‘Are you busy?’ Adrien asked tentatively.

‘I’m never too busy for you,’ Marinette replied inwardly, pasting on her customer-service smile. Out loud, she said, “What can I get you?”

“A dozen chocolate chip cookies,” the next customer said.

‘That line up would beg to differ,’ Adrien said, now sounding amused. Marinette glanced over her shoulder and sighed when she saw that he was right: the line still stretched out the door. The bakery hadn’t had a day this busy for a while. She hadn’t even noticed, yet Adrien had still commented on it, which could only mean...

‘You can see through my eyes now?’ she asked, intrigued.

‘Uh... kind of. I get little flashes, but only if I focus hard. And just getting that much gave me a headache,’ he admitted.

‘Cool! I haven’t tried that yet,’ Marinette said. ‘What’s up? You bored?’

‘No... Look up.’

Startled, she obeyed and nearly dropped the box of cookies when she saw Adrien crinkling his fingers at her from just inside the doorway. It was the first time she’d seen him in person since the party. They texted, spoke mentally, and video chatted every night, but Marinette still beamed when she spotted him and automatically waved back.

Adrien’s schedule was both busy and strict, so he didn’t have much spare time. Marinette understood: the bits and piece he’d already shared with her sounded kind of overwhelming, and she couldn’t imagine having literally her whole day, every day, scheduled. Adrien’s life sounded exhausting.

But even though she got it, the distance between them felt like a physical ache sometimes. Newly bonded soulmates were encouraged to spend as much time together as possible. Not just so that they could get to know each other, but also so that their bond wouldn’t be too stretched by physical distance before it had the chance to naturally grow.

She and Adrien were doing things backwards, Marinette knew. But short of telling everyone the truth, they didn’t have much choice. Adrien was adamant that he didn’t want to tell, and honestly Marinette was enjoying having her own little secret. Now when her parents were staring lovingly at each other and having private conversations, she didn’t have to stand awkwardly by: she could have her own mental conversation with her own soulmate.

“Is that a friend of yours?” Sabine asked, and Marinette startled.

“Uh, yeah. I met him at that party,” she said, deciding to go with a close approximation of the truth. “His name is Adrien.”

Sabine smiled. “You should go take a break,” she said.

“But Maman, it’s really busy!”

“It’ll be fine. You’ve been here all day helping me. Go on. And take some macarons,” Sabine added.

“Okay... thanks!” Marinette set the box of cookies on the counter and stepped away, putting three passionfruit macarons and three salted caramel macarons on one of the bakery’s plates. Then she took her apron off and walked out from behind the counter, making her way towards Adrien.

Rather than stay in the bakery, which was full to bursting and where they’d be under Sabine’s too watchful eye, Marinette led Adrien upstairs to the apartment. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief as Adrien shut the door behind them, and he looked over at her and smiled.

“Too loud?” he asked, probably already knowing the answer.

“I’m used to it, but it’s still a lot sometimes. So many people... so many eyes on you... but I guess you know all about that.” Marinette pointed him to the couch and went into the kitchen to get two glasses of milk.

“Yeah, I have to say I do,” Adrien said. “Mm.. passionfruit.”

Marinette giggled as she walked back into the living room. “Your favorite, right?”

“It tastes even better than it looks on clothes,” he teased, eyes twinkling, and she blushed and pouted at him as she sat down beside him on the couch.

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” she asked, resigned.

Adrien laughed and shoved the rest of the macaron in his mouth. Mentally, he said, ‘Probably not. It was cute.’

She blushed harder, grabbing a salted caramel macaron rather than respond. The way Adrien teased her caused butterflies in her stomach, but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. She hoped he didn’t know. It was hard to tell how many stray thoughts were slipping through their bond.

Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have their bond fully formed and functional. To not even have to fully form a thought for Adrien to already know what was on her mind. To be able to look through his eyes as seamlessly as she looked through her own. To know what he was feeling at all times, without even having to concentrate hard on him.

The thought was both scary and exhilarating.

“So how did you get away today?” she asked, both because she was curious and because she desperately needed a subject change.

“My father thinks that I’m at Chloé’s,” Adrien said unapologetically.

Marinette looked around, half-expecting to see Chloé materialize out of thin air. She popped a bit of macaron in her mouth and sent a questioning nudge at Adrien.

“Chloé is at some spa,” he explained. “She agreed to say I was with her if my father asked her later. I just really wanted to see you, and I knew Nathalie wouldn’t move things around in my calendar just for that.”

“But they will for Chloé,” Marinette said, squelching a bit of jealousy.

Adrien made an apologetic face. “Honestly, he doesn’t have much choice. Mayor Bourgeois could make things pretty uncomfortable for my father if he wanted to, and Chloé’s got her dad wrapped around her little finger.”

“That’s for sure,” Marinette said. “So... you snuck out of the hotel and over here?”

“Yup. Ran the whole way.” Adrien grinned triumphantly and ate another passionfruit macaron. “My bodyguard won’t be back to pick me up until seven, so I’ve got almost two and a half hours free.”

He was so boyishly excited, the feelings flowing through their bond freely, that Marinette had to smile. As little free time as Adrien got, it was flattering to think he wanted to spend it here with her. She reached for another macaron and then paused when she saw that the third salted caramel macaron was missing... with only one culprit.

Her head snapped up and she narrowed her eyes at Adrien. “I thought passionfruit was your favorite.”

“It is, but it’s good to try new things,” he said innocently. “Your dad makes amazing macarons, by the way.”

“Yeah, he does,” Marinette said. She found it hard to be mad when Adrien was clearly getting so much enjoyment out of this. Thinking about it, she supposed that he didn’t get many sweets.

“I don’t,” Adrien said, answering her unspoken question. “I have a nutritionist who keeps me on a very regulated diet to make sure I don’t gain a spare pound. Have to keep in model shape, you know.” He poked at his belly, not that he had much of one.

Marinette frowned at that, staring thoughtfully at Adrien’s midsection and thinking about all the pictures she’d seen him in. She’d always paid a lot more attention to the clothing he wore, of course. But now she realized that he was pretty skinny. Too skinny, especially for a thirteen-year-old boy who was potentially due for a growth spurt any day now.

“I’m going to feed you pastries every time I see you,” she said decisively, picking up the last passionfruit macaron and thrusting it into his hands.

Adrien blinked, looking startled. “Uh... okay? That might be a problem, though.”

“Why?” Marinette demanded.

“Because when school starts up again in September, I want to go to Collège Françoise Dupont with you and Chloé,” Adrien said. “I’m sick of being homeschooled.”

“What? Really? Your father agreed to let you come to school?” Marinette said, overjoyed by the prospect. If Adrien started going to school, they’d be able to spend most of the day together! She’d be able to sneak him pastries every day then.

“Well... no,” Adrien admitted. “But I’m going to come anyway.” There was a determined glint in his eyes, and she could feel a strong sense of stubbornness radiating through the bond. He really and truly had his mind made up about this, she realized.

“I would love to see you come to school. If you need any help, let me know what I can do,” Marinette said.

Adrien smiled at her. “Thanks, Mari.”

His smile made those butterflies resurge. Marinette cleared her throat, embarrassed, and picked up the plate. But in her rush, she accidentally dropped it. She squealed in protest, already dreading the crumbs that would stain her maman’s lace coffee table cloth -

And Adrien’s hand snapped out, grabbing the plate just above the table. “Careful!”

“R-right,” Marinette said. “Thanks.”

His smile widened as he handed her the plate. “No problem.”

Wrong. This was a very big problem. Marinette took the plate and fled into the kitchen.

[nanciluke20]

All about the Gelato near me

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Deer tick bites left untreated show a red, goal like ring around the face area of the bite, resulting in" Lyme Disease" or"Lyme Borreliosis." This is a serious issue, resulting in a lot of pain that you may wind up in a wheel chair or perhaps bed stricken for days at a time. It takes away the enjoyable aspects of life and can create you're everyday routine unhappy. Most of us know suffering from intense pain isn't a laughing matter, and being nauseous always is a burden inside it itself. This is what this disease places in you're body, sucking on precious time from your life, you are mind too. By the early twentieth century, the growth of the combustion engine and the diesel motor finished the era of commercial sailing ships. The production of steel and iron for cable and boats' hulls further removed natural fibers in marine use. However, hemp does seem to be making a resurgence. And it's about time provided the numerous advantages and benefits of this unusually eco fiber. Many countries are waking up to the worth of hemp. Canada, the uk and Germany all resumed commercial production in the 1990s. In total approximately thirty states produce hemp with China being the largest producer. The Hemp Industries Association has estimated that the North American hemp cloths and fabrics market surpassed $100 million in 2007 and is currently growing at around 10 percent each year. Many doctors treat this disorder with a regiment of antibiotics. This really is the efficient method to cure this disease. Although antibiotics can upset you're gut, affecting appetite severely. Which can lead to weight reduction as the disease progress. Headaches come and go and can consist of wretched migraines. They can be so unforgiving and punishable taking a toll on you every single time. Regular sleeping routines will be continuously interrupted causing chronic tiredness and disrupting ones circadian rhythm. 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Also, don't overlook the lower grades of marijuana. . .sometimes it is possible to locate the very best deal for your buck here. Also be sure to observe the pricing structure. This may be a significant determining factor when choosing a primary caregiver for the long run. Many Denver dispensaries provide separate pricing arrangements for members and nonmembers, so make sure you ask each for certain information. After seeing a few places you will begin to see how the overall decoration and air of Colorado cannabis dispensaries can widely vary place to place. Some dispensaries pose a primitive clinical environment that's somewhat like a doctor's office while some will feel more like you are walking into a buddy's comfortable house. Whatever your preference, there's a Colorado medical marijuana dispensary that's ideal for you. This guide isn't an endorsement for marijuana use. Cannabis is still a drug but it is extremely helpful in treating many people with many aliments. The medical marijuana world is rapidly changing so I strongly recommend reading the official Rules and Regulations for Medicinal use of Marijuana in the Colorado Department of Health before making any decisions concerning the medicinal use of cannabis. In the end the best decisions are informed decisions, so make sure you do comprehensive research on any topic involving your health prior to acting. When it comes to collecting, among the most exciting things you can select to collect are cannabis seeds. These contentious little beans are one of the most finely engineered organic products available, probably just slightly behind roses. The amazing characteristics alongside the sheer number of different strains of seed available make them one of the most interesting and most daunting collections to start.

[whatdoyouexpectthistime]

Blood Spatter - Part 4

Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3

________________________________

As anticipated, I look and feel like shit the next morning, and it’s already after ten before I finally get out of bed. My whole schedule is off now. Normally I’d be sleeping through the day so I can open the club for its first night of the week, but I need to get my ass down to the police station to harass Inspector Parker with what I’ve learned.

It's not much, but it’s more than I had before.

Kiril’s warning about his father plays back in my mind as I get off the bus. He seemed most vehement about me not pursuing that line of inquiry… but then again, he’d seemed pretty interested in getting into my pants, too, and we all know that didn’t quite get to where I wanted it to.

“No, you fuckin’ didn’t,” I growl under my breath, skipping up the steps and pushing through the glass doors into the precinct.

There isn’t as much activity inside as television and film would have you believe, but that suits me just fine. I know Parker thinks Jazz has just eloped with Konstantin, and I shouldn’t worry – but that is dumb. How the hell could he possibly know what Jazz would and wouldn’t do?

Okay, so disbelieving cops are pretty weak plot devices in the face of actual, potential crime, so maybe I’ll be able to convince him to actually do his job properly this time. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to make me wait.

Frustrated by the desk officer, I slump down in a chair to wait. I suppose there’s no telling what other cases Inspector Parker might be working concurrently, so I should try to be a little more understanding.

Because I’m really good at being patient.

Resting my head gently back against the wall, I close my eyes and breathe deeply. There’s little I wouldn’t give for Jazz to just come waltzing in and tell me this was all some very unfunny joke. What filters through the darkness beneath my lids, however, is a voice, one that stands out among the rest – and instantly my brain painfully clenches.

Her words are hushed; I can’t really tell what she is saying, but a terrifying familiarity carves its way through my skull and pushes in behind my eyes.

“What’s yours is a matter for me to decide,” I hear her sniff, a commanding sound spoken to the night and my imminent death, not there in the police station.

My stomach lurches; my body is heavy, lethargic.

“Did you feed on her? Here? Are you fucking crazy?” the woman snarls, and my eyes open to fix on the motionless lips of a woman standing with a uniformed police officer on the far side of the reception desk.

Though I know, I know I haven’t seen her before, I am absolutely positive she is the owner of the voice in my head, that somehow and somewhere I have heard her speak those words.

Then, her name roars from the unseen lips of a furious man, and I pitch forward as his possessive howl scrapes through my mind with animalistic claws.

“Get out of my way, Narumi!”

“Gah, Narumi,” I hiss through my teeth, holding both sides of my head and digging in my fingernails.

Fear swirls in, a rapidly moving tide as eyes fall upon my predicament, and I stumble to my feet, clumsily grappling for my bag before lurching for the door.

“Ma’am?” someone asks urgently at my back, but I need out, the cool air and the open.

“Miho,” comes a more insistent call – her voice, as I crash through the doors and stagger blindly down the steps.

To barrel straight into a pedestrian, who falls backward against the pavement with me collapsing on top.

Whimpering, my body feels weak against my victim, who barely even grunts as we hit the pavement. I’m sure I’d be embarrassed if my brain wasn’t still trying to escape out my ears, and so I just lie there against my human cushion.

Arms fold around me; a firm, safe embrace that brings some relief, until Narumi cuts into this momentary reprieve with a name that is not mine.

“Kiril?” she huffs as a question, and I crack my eyes open to peer blearily at the side of Kiril’s face.

“Okay now, Sparrow?” he queries with a smile so soft it’s briefly difficult to recall why I was so mad at him.

“Kiril,” Narumi prompts a little more sternly, her hands on her hips and her lips pressed into a thin, irked line.

“As much as I’m enjoying this arrangement,” Kiril murmurs into my hair, “perhaps we could take it somewhere a little more private?”

Weighted, fighting a kind of gravity Earth shouldn’t be pulling, my wriggling struggle out of Kiril’s arms no doubt looks something akin to an acid-tripping octopus.

“Here,” Narumi offers, but the thrust of her hand down in my direction causes an immediate resurgence of my panic.

“Don’t think she likes you,” Kiril smirks, getting to his feet and sweeping me against his body in one fluid movement of unfathomable grace.

Narumi, meanwhile, appears entirely put out.

“Taking this somewhere private might not be a bad idea,” she suggests, and I feel Kiril’s arms tighten around me.

“I’ll take care of her,” he declares, and while he is calm despite my hiccupping sobs into his coat, even I note the thread of inflexibility in his tone.

“Oh no, this is definitely my jurisdiction now,” Narumi insists, equally as insistent, but there is absolutely no give in Kiril’s posture.

“The little Sparrow is mine, Narumi,” he asserts, and this fires a spark of much needed resistance in my veins.

“I don’t belong to anyone,” I declare, giving Kiril’s chest enough of a push to extricate myself.

Though I wobble, I manage to stand my ground, but my thoughts are bubbling away with reflections of Narumi’s face, her words invading the memory of a dark alley and a hostile man named Alex.

“Uh, just stay away,” I warn, gathering my frustration to a fine point and projecting it outward like a weapon.

“Calm down, Miss Fujiwara,” Narumi says, tempering her expression. “I have been working with Inspector Parker on the case of your missing friend.”

Shaking my head, I try to sift through what I know, don’t know, and what I think I may know… but  am not sure. She was talking with officers inside the station, but at the same time, as each second passes I am more and more certain I’ve felt her pick me up from wet asphalt, sigh, maybe even a little in sympathy, and then convince me none of it ever happened.

“None of what?” I cry to myself, but as my shoulders slump I feel Narumi’s adamant gaze approach with force.

“Come with me,” she instructs, no fuss, no compromise.

The instinct is to comply, moving faster than thought, but the next second I battle it down.

“This one is not for your harem,” Kiril states, snatching my arm only to slide me in behind him.

“I’ve warned you not to meddle, Kiril,” Narumi snaps, but Kiril doesn’t seem at all bothered.

“And I told you, I will take care of this,” he replies. “Trust me.”

“Trust you?” she scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“Well, if you can’t trust family, who can you?” he chuckles.

It’s all some big game to him, apparently, but even in my destabilised state I’m listening to the conversation; there is a web I’m caught in, fine, sticky threads linking Jazz and Konstantin, Kiril, this woman Narumi, and me – and I’m definitely not the spider.

“Fly, Sparrow,” I hear Kiril urge me, even as he tosses another defiant barb at Narumi. “You and I shall talk of this later, but for now, go.”

Have I reason to trust him any more than I have to distrust Narumi? Why don’t I even question his voice in my mind, why haven’t I ever questioned it?

Whatever the answer to those questions, I clutch the strap of my bag and wheel around.

“Hey!” Narumi barks, followed by an exasperated sound when Kiril bars her way to me.

Narumi made no further exclamation as Miho followed Kiril’s instruction and ran – not that Miho heard anyway. In an absolute muddle, she sprinted – not entirely sure why – but only slowed to a jog when she’d turned the corner of the next block.

Something told her this didn’t make her safe, but she was quick to flag down a cab, and she was soon on her way to Jazz’s apartment.

She found herself muttering as she exited, but stopped when she dug into her bag for the key to the foyer. The building’s façade stirred a weary lamentation where it had once roused a sense of friendship, comfort and safety – still, it was better than standing out on the street, where she still felt exposed.

As she approached the mail slots to the left of the front door, the mail had been delivered, and as she had done every second day, Miho cleared Jazz’s box and headed upstairs.

“What the hell is going on? Am I really going nuts?” she thought, but figured if she was going nuts she probably wouldn’t be aware she was going nuts.

“Talking to yourself is kind of nuts,” she pointed out, then chuckled bitterly. “Kiril and Narumi clearly know each other – well – and then the headache… that woman. Fuck.”

Sighing in a way that was beginning to feel like habit, Miho dropped the letters on the coffee table, before heading over to the elaborate glass hutch; belonging to a lean, but impossibly soft rabbit. As if recognising her, the animal put his little paws up to greet her, begging almost, to be drawn into her arms.

“So, how has your morning been, Kuni?” she asked, sweeping him up and snuggling him against her chest. Slowly, Kuni blinked up from between her breasts and Miho smoothed her fingers over his ears, clearly enjoying the sensation.

“Yeah, I totally get it,” Miho went on, as if Kuni had responded to her. “But, believe me, boring isn’t so bad.”

Careful not to crush her fuzzy friend, Miho flopped down on the couch and scooped up the three envelopes in front of her.

“Bill,” she muttered, unfolding the water bill before letting it drop from her fingers. “I’ve never known anyone to spend so much time in the shower.”

Oblivious, Kuni simply closed his eyes and enjoyed Miho’s petting as she opened the second piece of mail.

And sat up so quickly the rabbit nearly slipped to the floor.

It was the first bank statement Miho had seen, which wasn’t all that odd considering they were only delivered monthly – but it immediately piqued Miho’s interest.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing…” she muttered, then her eyes became wide. “Two days ago…” she exhaled, but her statement trailed off as her eyes read over the location of Jazz’s last purchase… yesterday.

In Prague.

“Sorry, Kuni!” she exclaimed, jumping up and dropping the bunny safely back into his enclosure. “I’ll get Mieke to come over and feed you!”

The adrenaline of earlier that had been fuelled by alarm and confusion rushed back through her system, now through excitement. Over and over she turned what a small purchase out of the blue could mean.

“Surely if she was dead and someone stole her bank details, they’d have cleaned out her accounts by now, not just spend a couple of hundred dollars on, what, menswear?” she thought, as she all but flew down the stairs and flagged herself another taxi.

 It wasn’t the first time Miho had gone to Prague, but the first time she had without Jazz. While their holidays in the Czech Republic capital were usually planned well in advance to coincide with festivals, caught up in a whirlwind of hope, Miho had booked the earliest flight online while still on her way back to her apartment, and was hanging up on Mieke as she walked through her door. Normally, she would have taken great care choosing what to pack, fretting over what she might accidentally leave behind, but the moment Miho’s suitcase hit her bed, she was flinging whatever was closest in her closet across the room, then packing it all flat.

She paused only when she got a text message, and fell still when she saw it was Sebastian.

‘Was thinking you, Selina and I could grab dinner before opening the club tonight – what do you think?’ he’d written, and Miho’s brow creased.

Occasionally she and Sebastian had eaten together, but it had only ever been through convenience or happenstance – someone picked up noodles on the way to work, or leftovers that stretched far enough to feed multiple people. Chewing on her lip, Miho wondered if the morning they had spent together – which had also been atypical – had led him to change his perception of their relationship.

“Not an entirely terrible thought,” was her first reaction, but her frown instantly deepened, and her gut clenched.

With guilt.

“Guilty why?” she questioned herself, resisting the burn in her chest and the put-out glare of Kiril’s eyes suddenly in her mind.

“Fuck,” she grumbled under her breath, and called Sebastian’s number.

“Hey,” Sebastian greeted cheerfully, a little surprised too perhaps that she hadn’t just texted her reply.

“Hey,” Miho parroted – awkward. “Ahh, I’ve just finished talking to Mieke,” she went on, getting right down to business rather than directly addressing his invitation. “I am popping over to Europe for a bit, so I’d like for you and her to operate the club in my absence.”

“Popping over?” he chortled. “What spurred the sudden departure?”

Reluctantly, Miho answered truthfully.

“I got a lead on Jazz’s location,” she announced, and in the few seconds of silence that followed, Miho got the impression of Sebastian straightening his posture.

“Where? How?” he prompted.

“Czech Republic. She made a purchase there yesterday after weeks of nothing,” Miho explained, her heart rate increasing just thinking about this clue that could finally lead her to her friend. “I know it’s a long shot, Sebastian, so don’t say it, but with the police doing fuck all and Kiril being just as helpful I have to tr…”

“Kiril?” Sebastian queried, but it actually emerged more like a denouncement than a name. “What has Kiril Lambert got to do with this?”

“Oh… um…” Miho stalled, again feeling guilt swell. “Konstantin, who I’m sure is with Jazz - I mean why else would she be buying menswear – is Kiril’s brother.”

More silence, soundlessness that stretched so long Miho wondered if Sebastian had hung up.

“Still there?” she probed, and Sebastian cleared his throat.

“Is he with you now? Is he going with you?” he asked, seriously: worried and maybe even sneering.

“No, he’s not,” she told him a little curtly. “I’m a big girl, I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Of course you never get yourself into trouble,” he huffed, and Miho switched the phone to her other ear irritably.

“Look, I know it’s short notice, and you’ve got your sister with you,” she argued, trying to temper her tone, “but I am not missing this opportunity, so I really need you look after Pale while I get myself into trouble.”

“Miho, I don’t think you realise how dangerous the Lambert family is,” Sebastian warned, clearly frustrated. “If Konstantin is a Lambert, then Jazz is in far greater danger than you alone can…”

“This isn’t an argument, you know I’ll do anything for her,” Miho interrupted curtly. “I’ll message you when I know something if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Damnit Miho! It might be too late by then!” he growled, but Miho was moving the phone away from her ear.

“Thanks, I’ll talk to you later,” she said, and then hung up, grumbling under her breath.

 Night had well and truly closed in by the time Miho made it to her hotel in Prague – Iron Gate Hotel and Suites, the one she and Jazz always stayed at when they were in town. The beauty of their regular suite didn’t bring Miho the joy it usually did, the fine wooden furniture that really felt like the city.

Her stomach growled, but she ignored it, and after dumping her luggage, she skipped back downstairs and hit the pavement. Tourists walked the streets, couples arm in arm, groups of young women looking for fun, smiling and laughing, but Miho stalked with determination toward the first place she could think Jazz might be at that time – where they might have been if they were there together.

Overflowing with people, as it usually was, Miho entered the restaurant and nudged past several people waiting to be seated before casting her gaze around. Ignoring the glares of many, she simply stood, her pulse thundering in her ears as she scanned every inch of the large, crowded space while the maître d tried politely to get her attention.

“Slečna?” he prompted, a word Miho was familiar with at least, but she ignored the man and headed for the female toilets.

“Jazz?” she called, strolling in and checking for locked stalls, but there were none.

Though the maître d and a waiter were waiting for her when she emerged, again encouraging her to respond without actually laying their hands on her, she brushed by them and pushed into the men’s room without ceremony.

“Jazz?”

“Ma’am, please,” the maître d sighed in exasperation, clearly not wanting a confrontation. “I must ask you to…”

“Have you seen this woman lately?” Miho questioned, rounding on him with her cell-phone with a picture of Jazz on it.

The man blinked – glanced to the waiter who also looked at the image – then shook his head.

“And you’ve worked here every night the last… uhh… three weeks?” she pressed.

“Yes,” he frowned. “What is this about?”

“Here,” Miho said, thrusting a card against his chest. “She’s missing, so if you see her, please call me on that number. I’m offering a big reward for information leading to her.”

Leaving the two men stunned in her wake, the Miho-whirlwind blustered out of the restaurant and out onto the footpath once more, sucking in a lungful of cold air.

It was a gasp that overwhelmed her, an unexpected surge of emotion that threatened to knock her off her feet. Of course she hadn’t anticipated finding Jazz at the first place she looked, but hope had buoyed her beyond previous levels, so much so the disappointment of coming up empty flushed her cheeks with heat and her heart with anguish anew.

“If he’s hurt her I’m going to fucking kill him,” she growled, much to the confusion of a couple passing by, but she didn’t allow them to ponder longer, charging off again to her next search location.

 Pale didn’t open on Sunday nights, but there was often people inside preparing various elements or events. This evening was no different.

Though it was clearly not meant to be accessible to the public, Kiril tested the doors anyway, finding them unsurprisingly locked. He knew he could force them, but chose instead to knock loudly and wait until someone came to see what all the noise was about.

Eventually, a woman appeared, one he’d seen but never actually spoken to. Surprise registered on her face, and she unlocked the door and swung it outward.

“Mr. Lambert?” Kara queried, though she obviously knew his name. “I’m sorry, but the club isn’t open at present.”

In response, Kiril nodded, but his expression remained firm.

“I’m looking for Miss Fujiwara,” he revealed. “We had a meeting scheduled but she did not arrive, and she has not answered any of my calls.”

“Oh, that’s a bit weird,” Kara frowned quizzically. “That you had a meeting,” she clarified. “She called earlier saying she was headed for Prague, something of a family emergency I think.”

Kiril’s chin lifted a little in surprise, his eyes narrowing.

“Miss Mann?” he asked. “Miho has shared the story of her missing friend.”

In confirmation, Kara nodded.

“It was really very sudden, and she went on her own,” she explained, shrugging her shoulders a little uncomfortably. “If I’m honest, I’m a little worried for her.”

“She is a force to be reckoned with, it would seem,” Kiril smirked, but his eyes remained fixed on Kara’s face. “However, I share your concern. I could leave immediately if I had her travel details: provide support.”

Without reserve, Kara smiled. Though she didn’t have any exact details, she had heard Miho and Jazz talk of their adventures in Prague many times.

“It’s not much, but I know they always stayed at Iron Gate Hotel and Suites, so I guess she could be there?” she offered, when Sebastian called out, appearing a few seconds later.

“Kara, have you seen the…”

His sentence broke off when he saw Kiril, and a storm quickly gathered in his countenance.

“We’re closed,” he announced coldly.

“Mr. Lambert is looking for Miho,” Kara piped up, looking with some confusion between the two men.

Open hostility radiated.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Kiril said to Kara, inclining his head, even offering a shallow bow before he turned, but Sebastian caught his arm and hissed.

“Stay away from Miho.”

Straightening, Kiril looked down at the offending hand, but did nothing to remove it.

“Unless I am mistaken, and I am not,” Kiril began slowly, deliberately, “you have no claim over her, Mr. Ross.”

“No one has a claim over her,” Sebastian volleyed, all teeth and glaring, “but when one Lambert vampire has already torn her life apart, she doesn’t need another.”

If Kiril was surprised by Sebastian’s specificity, it did not show, nor did any concern.

“Mind yourself, little guard dog,” he smiled with infuriating smugness, the very peak of a pointed incisor adding to the sharpness to his condescension. “Don’t think I’m unaware you and yours stand apart; it would be foolish to begin a fight you have no chance of winning.”

“And equally as foolish of you to be so sure of yourself,” Sebastian shot back, in no way backing down. “I will not allow you to drag Miho into your world.”

“It might surprise you to learn, Mr. Ross, that I do not want that for her either,” Kiril pointed out. “But the fact remains she is pursuing the shadow of her own accord; better that there be someone to catch her at the bottom of the rabbit hole, than not.”

This did not seem to comfort Sebastian at all, but his hold on Kiril did fall away.

“Just stay away from her, damnit,” he cursed, causing Kiril to chuckle.

“If that is all you have, I will be on my way,” Kiril laughed. “Be a good boy and look after your mistress’ house while she’s away.”

“Sebbie?” a new female voice called, and a slight, tanned-skin woman appeared behind Sebastian just in time to see Kiril’s smirk widen as he moved away once more.

“Fucking Hell,” Sebastian hissed under his breath, though his anger was not truly directed at his sister.

“Mmm, who’s that?” Selina grinned against her brother’s arm, watching Kiril’s back.

“Don’t you start,” Sebastian growled. “Under no circumstances are you to go anywhere near that… man.”

  Dejected, my mission turns up nothing, and having been up since early Sunday morning, I end up returning disheartened and exhausted to the hotel as dawn is creeping up on the city. Struggling through a confusing swamp of dream and nightmare, I’m hunted by shadow, slashed at by light, chasing my best friend only to be barred by this woman Narumi and a sea of circling ravens.

Waking in a sweaty tangle, however, is no longer a surprise to me, but it doesn’t mean I feel any less icky. Showering only does so much to pull me from a sullen mood, but I have to get moving because it’s already past eleven and I have plenty of places to search.

Alas, my feet grow heavier each time I’m told no one has seen Jazz, and I’m convinced I’ve left little chips of my heart in a storybook trail behind me. By nightfall my stomach is grumbling, but I just can’t bring myself to stop and eat. My mind is occupied by the image of Jazz’s eyes, blue and beautiful, cheeky and teasing, challenging and complicit.

God, it stings.

“Don’t cry, you fragile tart!” I snap at myself. “What good is crying?”

But it’s so hard to look forward, because I’m afraid my forever won’t have Jazz in it anymore.

“Assassins don’t cry,” I tell myself firmly, nodding politely as I make incidental eye contact with a man walking in my direction.

When his hip bumps firmly into mine, it’s a total surprise, one that sends me stumbling sideways into one of many dim alleys lined with aging architecture and mystery.

“Hey, what the hell?” I snarl, gripping my bag’s strap tightly. “If this is a  mugging, they’ve made a big mistake.”

“Keep your voice down,” the man whispers, a baritone that should have sounded warm, but still racks a shiver through my body.

An attempt to sidestep him is thwarted easily, but not by him.

The man is not alone, this fact revealed as a hand curls over my mouth and an arm around my waist that drags me further into obscurity.

Panic grips me; adrenaline fills me; and in a flurry of flailing limbs I land a lucky blow against my attacker and am released.

There is no voice, however, when I open my mouth to scream, the banshee trapped in my throat by the clear and present danger of what was once two men, now four.

“Good,” one of them snickers, satisfied it seems by my silence despite the hunched readiness of my posture. “That mouth of yours has already gotten you into plenty of trouble.”

Surrounded, my back literally against the wall, I do my utmost to glower at each offender in turn.

“Take it,” I finally gasp, throwing my bag to the ground before me, but none of them move to retrieve it.

I note then, the cut of their clothing, the cleanness of their faces, the neatness of their hair – not really the types to grab a girl for her purse.

“So,” the initial man begins, and I zero in on him, “what do you know about Konstantin Lambert?”

Swallowing, I turn his question over in my mind.

“First in London, and now here? Who is Konstantin Lambert to get such a response?”

“I’m looking for him,” I answer, my throat dry. “Do you know where he is?”

“If we did, he’d be dead,” one of the others growls, his shoes scraping loudly against the concrete as he shuffles toward me.

“Why?” I very nearly hiccup, but my lip curls upward in what I can only hope is a fair imitation of a sneer.

They look a little stunned, confused maybe, looking between one another, until the closest man reaches for my shoulder.

I want to close my eyes, and I think for a split second I do, before something snaps inside me – and the next snap happens almost as quickly.

There’s no thought, just pure instinct.

My fingers dig into the flesh of his wrist as I step forward and jerk down; he hits the ground. The sound his wrist makes as my heel stomps down on his arm, the crunch of bone breaking beneath jarring force, is swiftly consumed by his yelp, and followed by the slump and roll of his body to the feet of his compatriots.

For a few astonished seconds no one can believe what I’ve done, least of all myself. When the moment is broken, much like the limp dangle of my attacker’s wrist as he drags himself back to his feet, the expressions I face are a whole lot more terrifying.

“That,” he grated, rage bubbling in his eyes, “was a mistake.”

“Actually,” a new voice interrupts, casual, flippant, and so familiar that my already racing heart threatens to seize, “attacking her was a mistake.”

Part 5