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sarcasticslothy · 2 years ago

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The following will be a young royals post season two ramble.

It contains ALL of the spoilers. I have put it under tags AND under a cut.

I repeat do not read this if you are going to watch season two of young royals and don't want to be spoiled.

First of all, I loved the season. It was oh so different to season one for many reasons but it's really a kick on the gut kinda season. There's a LOT of pain - by so many characters but particularly Wilhelm who seems to have a shadow of hell following him. The acting was brilliant by all - and I really loved that we got to see some characters that we only got minor parts from in the first season.

For Wilmon fans it'll feel a lot more light on in the more romantic/cute scenes but I the absolute symbolism behind Wille closing the curtains and then us getting to see nothing else after it was actually kind of perfect? Their love was just for them now.

Yes, they both try the moving on thing. Simon with Marcus and Wille with... Felice (I screamed when it happened!) I never felt myself hating Marcus as a characters even though he was in the middle of my favourite couple. He was a 'perfect' kinda guy for Simon but there was just no way he could compete with the history they have.

Just quietly, when Simon told him the fish don't have names? That line actually made me gasp. Bravo.

Now to August who is SUCH a confusing character to me. He switches from someone trying their hardest to be good to absolute dickhead so quickly it gives me whiplash but the way that he can gloss over the feelings of other people can't be ignored. Obviously, number one enemy in regards to doing the video and in the first two episodes we see him kind of accept himself as being Wille's punching bag. And then there are moments where he gets his little smirk on and you know evil is coming and you backtrack every thought you had about him trying to be good. The scene when he gets Alexander to cover for him is just SO widely true to that bad side of him that Sara said it best "you really are clueless"

Sara, Sara, Sara what are you doing giiiiirl?! The whole time she was falling for him, you could see it was the clouded eyes of first love guiding her every decision. I just couldn't believe that it was allowing her to glaze over the fact this guy released a SEX tape of your BROTHER! I hope she gets her revenge and is able to help Simon make something right - next season 🙏

Feline was SUCH a good friend to Wille and the whole female group as a whole were very entertaining and good for a laugh although I feel like she kinda of got forgotten about as a character? We had her quitting riding and the whole storyline of her selling the horse but there was no explanation further, no talking about what she wanted to do and no real solution to why she was quitting riding besides she didn't like it? Was that even it?!

But really, it all comes together in episode 6. SO much happens so quickly. That scene at the gun range?! Wille!! That boy can really fly off the handle. I sometimes struggled to understand Wille's very emotional reactions. His outburst in an early episode (1 or 2?!) Over the phone was definitely something! But I kind of felt him rise to the moment that allowed him to pick up that gun.

But the pièce de résistance of this season and indeed the ending moment is Wille's speech. How satisfying to see him finally choose his OWN way forward. Not Simon's. Not the royal family. Not his mother's. Not August's. You couod say his decision may not totally solve his problems but the absolute satisfaction on his face as he admits it was him and turns to Simon. Aaahhhhhhh. The dual smiles. I just felt so happy for them. So relieved.

Other thoughts:

- Malin, how could you?! How dare you break the snow globe by physically pulling Wille? You just disappeared off every fanfic in the future as the tough, but lovable security guard 😅

- Sara being so damn upfront with August in his room after just kissing him. That's definitely a whole other level of confident

- the whole little grouping of scenes with Wille looking at Simon on his phone, going to the fence with the sunset and water behind him was beautiful.

- I thought I'd find myself hating the queen more for putting her son in this obviously horrible position but I think I found there was a part of her that was clearly upset that she had no way to fix things for her son. No way to give him what he wanted without breaking away from tradition and a royal history that she is clearly responsible for keeping going

- Simon/Ayub/Rosh friendship ruling the damn show. The way they supported Simon and were a sounding board for him at every turn was so lovely! That little scene at the end with Ayub on the phone and them saying goodnight was so freaking sweet.

- "Did he just say he'd renounce the throne for you?!' That whole scene was SCREAM worthy

- The Hug! The I love you! The way that it bookended last season's final scene when Wille said it and reversed it. Yes yes yes! Gos they do closeness so well. The quiet moment of hands touching and skimming their faces against each other. And just breathing like they finally felt at home. Ahhh perfection

- oh Rousseau, I felt devastated when they took you away. Especially with that dickhead dad. Though now, you are owned by August so I don't know which is worse?!

- the school project! Talking to the teacher with the book in mind but the way they spoke about their situation to each other. The way they explained so much of their decisions, the way they felt. Ahhhh. Sara's 'she committed suicide' after was a little bit oh! Well. Right.

- this school is a little bit nuts to me. Don't get me wrong, obviously we are talking crazy money here but my god the events they have and the way they do meals and classes sometimes has me cracking up. Every time they stood when a teacher entered I just thought back to my school days when we barely looked in their direction 😅🤣

- every single fighting Wilmon scene broke my heart. The one in the locker room where Simon admits he might not be able to handle Wille and his position? Euuurrgghh hit me good, angst.

- August on the phone with jan-Olof (lemme hear you say old annoying guy!) When he asks August if he did anything thst wouod cause issue and August did nearly every single one 🤣🤣

Okay, this post is already ridiculous but I needed to express my feelings. I will abuse that repeat button on so many episodes. I really adored 6 - it was so drama full. But 4 was also a really great episode. Please, please give us season 3! Wilmon endgame is coming. I think there is still a crazy good story still there to unroll. I mean Wille's speech and Sara's decision alone require some resolution! Gimme gimme!

#young royals #young royals spoilers #young royals season 2 #spoilers be here #also rambling be here #i just went a little nuts #but really spoilers be HERE #wilmon #wilmon spoilers #young royals season two spoilers #gimme your thoughts!

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bosspigeon · 3 years ago

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Carabosse et la Fee des Lilas

Prompt: 💋Drag

Pairing: Adam/Male Detective, Bonus Found Family Vibes~

Words: 5,346

Summary: Tina spends some quality time with Arlo and Unit Bravo as they prepare for Wayhaven's first real Pride festival, Tina torments her best friend and his maybe-boyfriend (as is her god-given right), and Arlo has a big think about his favorite role and what that role allowed him to explore~

CW for references to transmisogyny and implications of past trans/homophobia

Sometimes, Tina wonders if Arlo missed his true calling. His hands are surgeon-steady as he pencils delicate patterns onto Felix’s cheeks, outlining with white eyeliner in preparation to fill them in with bold colors and glitter. Tina almost can’t wait for her turn, even though Felix looks like he’s in real, physical pain with the effort of holding as still as possible. She’s no stranger to that struggle herself.

Neither is she a stranger to Arlo’s forceful, if toothless, threats, overcome as she is by fondness when he growls that he's going to draw a mustache on Felix’s face with permanent marker if he doesn’t stop bloody bouncing.

It’s pretty fun to watch from the outside. Sure, when you first sit down when he’s like this—all sharp and snappish and “stop moving or I’ll chuck you out the window”—it’s hard to keep still, but Arlo’s got this sort of quiet intensity to him when he’s focusing on something that’s oddly meditative. He’s just a soothing presence, really. Like a capybara or something. He’s friend-shaped.

Whatever weird magic it is, it’s definitely catching, because Felix looks less like he’s about to burst, like he did when Arlo was putting down the foundation, and more like he’s enjoying the attention. Tina’s not sure how long it’s going to last, seeing as Felix has given her a run for her money in the “manic energy” department, and he’s nowhere near as caffeinated as she is at any given time, but for the time being, he’s (mostly) still and quiet.

There’s music playing, quiet enough that the broody one (she knows his name, but it seems to bug him when she calls him "the broody one," which is funny, so—) only grumbled about it for a few minutes when Arlo turned it on, and even seems to enjoy sitting close enough to Arlo’s stupidly fancy stereo system to, she guesses, feel the rumble of the bass through the floor. Vampires are weird.

Anyway, it’s Arlo’s usual sad goth boy nonsense, but as quiet as it is, and with its intense instrumentals and rumbling vocals, it’s pleasant background noise more than anything.

Nate (the handsome and charming one, because of course all Arlo’s vampire friends are handsome, so she has to differentiate between them somehow) is rifling through Arlo’s bookshelf like it’s his job, and visibly struggling to pick something to read, because Arlo’s sitting room bookshelf (the one she found at a yard sale three hours away and lashed to the top of her sedan with every single bungee cord she could find at the local hardware store because it was coffin-shaped, for god's sake) is where he keeps all his weirdo occult stuff to, quote, “make people who pop by unannounced leave faster.”

And then there’s the big, handsome, stupidly fit blonde Arlo still won’t call his boyfriend, even though they’re so obvious it’s sickening, and she means that with all the love in her heart. He’s sitting in the armchair by the bookshelf, positioned so he can look like he’s reading one of Arlo’s old music magazines and totally isn’t taking advantage of the perfect line of sight of Arlo perched on the end of his coffee table so he’s not too tall to work on Felix, sitting in a chair from the kitchen. Tina sure hopes he doesn’t think he’s subtle, being a super special vampire secret agent and all.

He seems to notice her eyeing him, at least, and keeps his attention pinned firmly on the magazine, though he is definitely not reading a single word. Nate keeps browsing, the Broody One keeps brooding, Arlo keeps working, and Felix starts to hum. Arlo gives him a sharp look, but it doesn’t seem to be moving his face in any major way, so he just rolls his eyes and keeps tracing pretty patterns onto that unfairly smooth, dark skin. Do vampires do skin care? They probably don’t even need to, and that’s probably one of the reasons people like to villainize them. It always comes down to jealousy, doesn’t it?

She sighs, loudly enough that every eye in the room turns to her, and while she did not expect the sudden attention, she knows she can at least use it to entertain herself. She homes in on Adam, and smiles when she finally looks at the magazine he’s still valiantly pretending to read. There’s a familiar man on the cover, and while she can’t be bothered to remember his name, she grins. “Oh, hey! Arlo, he’s reading the one with the guy who looks like you!”

Arlo doesn’t even look up, but he huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes again. He’s going to give himself a headache if he keeps that up.

The comment does exactly what she wants it to, which is draw the attention of all the other vampires. Arlo even begrudgingly pulls the pencil away from Felix’s cheek so he can take a look, and he immediately bursts out laughing.

“Arlo!” he exclaims, slapping at Arlo’s knee. “You didn’t tell us you had a twin!”

Nate chuckles (warm and rich and handsome, if a sound can be called handsome) and turns from the shelf to study the magazine curiously himself. Even the Broody One peers over to see, a little smirk curling his permanently-scowling mouth.

“Considering he was born in the sixties, I definitely don’t,” Arlo drawls. “Tina’s been making that joke since we were kids. She’s just happy she’s got an audience who hasn’t heard it twelve times a week since she first saw my old Type O Negative poster.”

“Some jokes just get better with time,” Tina says archly. “Like a fine wine.”

“And some jokes age like milk,” Arlo fires back.

Adam tilts the magazine so he can look for himself, and his dour expression clouds over even more, brows furrowing and mouth twisting. He peers up at Arlo, studying him, then down again.

Got you. “Yeah, you’re right,” Tina says, nodding sagely at him. “Arlo’s much prettier.”

It has exactly the reaction she was hoping for. Arlo drops his eyeliner pencil and makes a strangled noise, glowering at her with his cute freckly cheeks going all red, and Adam, who is a good bit paler than Arlo, goes pink from the crewneck of his just-this-side-of-too-tight tee shirt to his hairline. Tina wants to punch the air as the other vampires snicker at them. Well, except for Nate. Nate’s not a snickerer. He chortles. It’s adorable.

“Speaking of pretty!” Felix crows once they’ve all had a laugh at their fearless leader’s expense. He points to his own face with both hands, dancing in his chair, and Arlo sighs and rolls his eyes again, bending to pick up the dropped pencil. Luckily, the tip isn’t broken, so he can get right back to work, once he’s given the young vampire a moment to get his wiggles out. He settles, sitting on his hands and pursing his lips when Arlo gives him a dry look. He hovers back in with the pencil, and then Felix blurts out, “How’d you get so good at this anyway? Well, I assume you’re good at it. I haven’t seen it yet.”

Arlo doesn’t say anything. He just looks at him, pencil poised, until Felix pinches his mouth shut with a quick little apology. Once Arlo’s satisfied his canvas is actually going to hold still and keep quiet, he gets back to it. “My school was pretty small, especially compared to the bigger-name performing arts schools out there,” he says after a moment of quiet focus, tracing the outline of a heart around one of Felix’s eyes. “Our department didn’t really have a huge budget, and workspace was at a premium too. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for performances before someone else had to use the theatre, so we all did our own makeup at once, for the most part. Sometimes we’d help each other out, because we all had our strengths and weaknesses.”

He pulls back the pencil, squinting critically at the heart like it’s not completely perfect. “Demi was the best at laying the groundwork, and at matching colors to our costumes and complexions. Viv was the best at coming up with concepts and making sure we looked like a matching set. Wendi could do insane prosthetics, and was the best at bullying our department head into giving us the money for them. I had the steadiest hands, so I always did the eyes and the details.”

“Was Wendi the one who did your Dracula look?” Tina gasps. “That one was so cool!”

“Dracula?” Felix blurts. Tina doesn’t miss how the others perk up with interest too.

Arlo glares at him, and he shrinks back with a sheepish little grin. “Yeah, we did Dracula, uh… second year, I think? That was when Tilly transferred in and started doing our choreography. She’s the one who got Professor Dacey to let us do less classical stuff and start branching out a bit.” He glances briefly at Tina, staunchly ignoring the way Felix pouts at him for dividing his attention. “And, yeah, Wendi did the prosthetics for that one.”

“She’s got to be magic,” Tina asserts. “She managed to make your sweet, mopey face look so scary.”

Felix and Mason both snicker at that, and Arlo’s mouth goes all lemon-sour pinchy, like it always does when she calls him a sad puppy man, or any variation thereof.

“Take a lap,” Arlo says to Felix. “Don’t touch your face.” He jerks his head at Tina when Felix bolts to his feet and starts zooming around the flat to get out some of his energy. “Your turn, if you’re done being a comedian.”

“I’m never done,” she says with a sunny smile, but she bounces over to take Felix’s place in the chair and closes her eyes serenely so he can start on her makeup.

“And, God, do I know it,” he grumbles under his breath, knowing full well she can hear him, and so can everyone else in the room, too.

“Do you have pictures?” Felix hollers. He’s dipped into Arlo’s studio, and he’s making no secret of rifling through the desk in there, drawers slamming and paper rustling.

Arlo tips his head back so when he sighs, loud and dramatically long-suffering, he’s not blowing his breath right in Tina’s face. She appreciates the gesture. “Bottom right drawer,” he calls back, resignation thick in his voice. Given how long he’s been putting up with Tina—and Felix might just be Tina’s second platonic soulmate (Arlo, of course, being the first)—he already knows that keeping quiet is just prolonging the inevitable. Tina opens her eyes briefly to see Felix come sailing out of the studio with a thick leather-bound album held triumphantly over his head.

“Oh, I haven’t seen that in years!” she coos happily.

Arlo bops her on the forehead pointedly with a sponge covered in foundation, and she closes her eyes obediently.

She hears Arlo’s antique sofa creak as Felix plops down onto it, rifling through the plastic pages. “Aw,” he whines, “no baby pictures?”

“I can’t imagine him ever being a baby,” Mason snorts, and he sounds closer than he was before. Tina knows better than to open her eyes while Arlo’s in the zone, though. He’ll bop her with something less soft than a sponge next time. “I figured he’s just always been a giant.”

Felix laughs, high and chiming. “No wonder Agent Priestley’s always so sour, then,” he says. Tina giggles, and it becomes an inelegant snort when Arlo bops her again on the nose.

“Ask Rebecca if you want to see my baby pictures,” Arlo mutters blandly, and Tina can feel the weight of his attention. “I doubt she has many after age two, and the ones before I’ve barely seen.”

Tina’s not a super-special supernatural secret agent, but she tries with all her might to will someone to change the subject before things get weird. Now’s as good a time as any to learn telepathy.

Felix, heart of her heart, interrupts what’s shaping up to be a real prize winner of an awkward silence with a loud gasp. “Woah!” he exclaims, and pages crinkle as he presumably holds up the book for Arlo to see. “Who’s this? Did you do her makeup too?”

Arlo’s hair rustles as he turns his head away from her, and then the hand on her cheek freezes. Tension radiates through every inch of his body, practically leaching into hers. She cautiously opens one eye, and sees Arlo sitting up impeccably straight, stiff as a board and staring at Felix like a deer in the headlights. He swallows so hard she can see his throat move. “Um,” he says, stilted and strange. “Yeah. I did.”

Tina opens both eyes and squints at the photo album. Oh.

Felix looks at the sudden strain in the way Arlo is sitting, the tightness of his posture, and looks quizzically down at the picture again.

Tina remembers that performance. She remembers Arlo dancing (ha) around the subject when she asked him teasingly if he was going to be playing the prince, who was the lead, was he excited to kiss a pretty girl?

She can’t remember the character’s name, not so many years after the fact, especially since they were all weird classical nonsense, either Latin or French or some mishmash of the two. But she remembers the costume. She remembers waiting with bated breath to see Arlo onstage, to stand and scream and cheer obnoxiously loud in support of her best friend. She shot to her feet the second she saw his obvious silhouette rise from a feather-bedecked black chariot, head and shoulders taller than anyone else onstage. The music swelled, lightning flashed, and then when the spotlight hit him, she was so stunned she plopped right back into her seat with her jaw on the floor.

Arlo’s always been one of those guys that straddled the line between pretty and handsome. Long, lustrous hair and eyelashes she would kill for, cheekbones that could kill, a defined jaw, a proud nose, and intense eyes she could only call sultry—if she hadn’t known him since they were both weird, gawky brats, she’d probably be half in love with him before figuring out she wasn’t his cup of tea. But seeing him onstage was always an adventure. He threw himself into whatever character he played, put his everything into them, from the costume to the makeup to the performance. He just became the character, and in a way that was so very Arlo, all that intensity and focus channeled into an act that completely stole the show, in Tina’s humble and completely unbiased opinion.

Carabosse! That was her name!

Carabosse was no different.

Arlo’s makeup was flawless, ghost-white foundation giving him intense Morticia Addams vibes, contouring that made his cheekbones look absolutely unreal, bold black (or maybe really dark purple?) lipstick and shiny, smoky eyeshadow that made him look ethereal and wicked, with a daggerpoint cat-eye that she spent an hour begging him to teach her after the show. When he turned his head in a sharp, birdlike motion to look down his nose at the dancers playing the King and Queen, she gasped at the way his hair rippled down his back, shiny-black and woven with actual feathers that trailed back from the ornate metal circlet resting on his brow like a bird’s crest. The costume was breathtaking, too, a tightly corseted bodice and a high collar, a dramatically billowing skirt and trailing, feathered sleeves that flared like wings whenever he moved.

And the way he moved! Arlo’s dancing changed with every role, whatever he felt would suit the character. One of her favorites was always his Hans-Peter (she had a soft spot for that one, and had ever since she was little—one of the first Christmas gifts her stepmom had ever given her was little storybook version of The Nutcracker that came with a CD) because his dancing was so stiff and stridently mechanical, he looked like a real toy soldier come to life. But his villains moved with a slinking, predatory prowl she’d only ever seen in monster movies, and never in something like a ballet. His Carabosse was as beautiful as she was terrifying, and it was incredible to watch. She wanted to fling herself at him after the show and babble at him endlessly like she always did, but she spent a solid minute staring at him slack-jawed, until he shifted awkwardly and looked down, and the confident intimidation of the Wicked Fairy sloughed away to reveal Arlo underneath.

He almost melted into the floor with relief when she finally startled to babble.

She puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, and he takes a slow, deep breath, offering Felix a strained smile. “Take a closer look, mate,” he says quietly.

Felix does. He looks up and squints at Arlo, and then back down at the photo. Tina has to bite her lip so she doesn’t laugh when he looks over at Adam, still holding the magazine with that metal singer that kind of looks like Arlo on it, and then back at Arlo. His mouth drops open into a little o, and he shoots to his feet and shouts, “No way!”

Mason was allowed his name back briefly, but he goes right back to Broody One when he grimaces at Felix and slinks pettishly back to his corner.

Arlo’s shoulders are practically around his ears, but he tries to keep smiling. “Yeah. Sleeping Beauty. Fourth year. I was the Wicked Fairy.”

“He was amazing,” Tina declares, shoulders back and chin tipped up challengingly. “The costume was insane, but the way he played her was absolutely, ridiculously badass.”

“You look awesome!” Felix blurts, still gawking down at the photo. He flips to the next page, and squeaks happily when he finds more pictures, from different angles, showing off the costume, the way Arlo loomed over the other dancers, the way he commanded the stage. Tina should really find out who took the pictures and send them her thanks, because they really put in the work. “Your makeup, your dress, your hair! How’d you even do that?”

Arlo laughs, and it sounds so utterly relieved, Tina’s heart breaks a little. Arlo’s always been sensitive, and for someone who dresses and holds himself the way he does, he worries more than he lets on what people think of him. Especially people he cares about. She squeezes his shoulder again, and he bites his lip when he glances back at her and smiles hesitantly.

“A lot of wire, and enough hairspray to choke a bloody cow,” he says, twisting around and slinging his long legs over the coffee table so he can face the sofa. “I think we bought every bag of black feathers the craft store had, and then spent an entire weekend painting them with this stupidly expensive embossing powder. We had to get, like, ten pots of the stuff, because the craft store only had pots the size of a quarter.”

“I admire your dedication,” Nate says pleasantly, strolling over to peer over Arlo’s shoulder. They tighten just a bit before relaxing slowly. “That costuming is superb. I’ve seen professional productions that weren’t half so detailed.”

“That would be Viv’s work,” Arlo laughs, looking down at the pictures fondly. “She took whatever cheap garbage the department had for us, raided the nearest clearance fabric rack, and worked her magic. The employees at that little craft store loved and hated us in equal measure.”

Arlo is still tense, but he’s loosening up little by little, and with him Tina does too. The easy camaraderie is soothing, and she knows how much Arlo cares about his vampire friends, so it’s got to be a huge weight off his shoulders to be able to let his guard down around them. He deserves that. He deserves to be able to be himself.

Adam standing up draws Arlo’s attention like nothing else could, and he freezes like a startled rabbit again looking up at the burly blonde vampire as he approaches the sofa. He looks a split second from bolting. Tina sits up straighter and gives Adam her most daring look, squaring her shoulders to make it perfectly clear she's ready to fight the second he opens his mouth. She’ll definitely lose, sure, but she’ll make as much trouble as she can before she goes down.

He reaches out, his hand hesitating before it touches the album’s glossy page, and he looks up at Arlo with a questioning tilt to his brows. Arlo looks like he’s barely breathing, but he nods, and Adam slips one of the pictures from its sleeve. He straightens his spine, shoulders back, holding the photo and studying it carefully. His face is impossible to read, about as expressive as a bloody brick wall. Tina’s vibrating with nervous energy. She’ll fight a vampire, though. She will.

When Adam does finally speak, his voice comes out so softly Tina almost doesn’t hear it over the adrenaline rushing through her. “You look… striking.”

Striking. Oh my god.

She wants to laugh. They’re ridiculous.

“Thanks,” Arlo chokes out, his cheeks and ears going red this time.

Oh my god. Tina covers her mouth with both hands. Arlo glowers at her. It’s a lot less threatening when he’s blushing like that. “I didn’t say anything,” she mumbles against her palms.

“Your face,” he hisses, and she yelps.

“Oh! Shit!” She pulls her hands away, and he grabs her by the chin to check the damage with a click of his tongue.

Tina thought things would get better once Arlo actually kissed the man (and maybe got a leg over, but that’s only her business when she can finally get Arlo to actually talk about if the big, beefy Adonis is as missionary-with-the-lights-off as he looks) but at least they’re not just staring longingly at each other from across the room and then getting all sad about it anymore . Thankfully, Felix seems to be an old hand at clearing up the weird tension between the two of them, chiming in a delighted, “I’ve never seen you look so scary!” as he rifles through all the pictures from the Sleeping Beauty show. “I mean, you’re pretty scary when you go all furry, but also, you sort of just look like a big lanky puppy, because it’s just you, you know? This is someone else! Who is she! She's so cool!”

Arlo sighs and turns around to fix whatever Tina’s ruined with her foundation, and throws himself back into dolling her up. Thankfully, the actual festival’s not for a while yet. She complained about the unnecessarily early start when Arlo suggested the time, but now she’s glad he’s such a persnickety prick about scheduling. “I had a lot of fun with it,” he admits, shrugging his shoulders. “The original script notes said to get, y’know, sort of silly with it, but I wasn’t a big fan of that angle for a character like her. Yeah, I wanted to be campy, but not in the way…” He purses his lips. “Okay, well, Nate probably knows this, but a lot of classical ballets that have a female villains do this thing with them that I hate.” He frowns deeply, patting at Tina’s chin with gentle ferocity. “ An evil female character is supposed to be sort of… sort of a cautionary tale, I guess? Like your typical bitter spinster crone, the old hag, or the wicked stepsisters, things like that. So they’ll specifically cast a male dancer and put them in bright, gaudy facepaint and garish costumes that are supposed to be cartoonish and ugly, that you're supposed to find funny, to show you that this character is bad because she’s indelicate and mannish, and that’s why she’s evil.”

His mouth twists around the words, and he looks up, back at the vampires, leaving Tina a moment to really appreciate that Arlo’s comfortable enough with them to do what he’s only ever really done with her—which is ramble about something he’s passionate about. It’s always fun to watch. He turns back to her, and she just wishes his hands weren’t occupied, because he’s a big hand-talker otherwise. “I got the role because the professor thought it would be funny to stick me in a role like that, being so tall and, y’know,” he gestures vaguely to his faded old band tee and dark jeans, the thick leather cuff around his wrist. Tina doesn’t see what he really means, seeing as he looks cozy and content right now, but she gets what he’s going for. “He was expecting me to be awkward about it. The big, tough guy doing drag as the creepy crone caricature.” He huffs. “I talked with Demi about it, and we decided to say fuck that.” He sits up straighter, tilts up his chin, and looks down his nose at Tina.

She peers up at him, wide-eyed, and suddenly wonders if this is how Demi felt, playing Aurora when Carabosse looked down her nose at her like an insect under her heel.

“I thought Carabosse deserved better,” Arlo says fiercely. “If I was going to be a villain, I was going to be a damned good villain. I was going to tower over all the delicate, dainty little princesses and fairies, and I was going to be fierce. Professor Dacey wanted Aurora, and Candide, and Florine to be the epitome of sweet, delicate femininity, the ideal damsel in any classical show. Carabosse is supposed to be the complete opposite. You’re supposed to root against her, not want to be her. She’s a threat to the idea of womanhood, of the ideal feminine. She’s bold and selfish and she takes what she wants. I leaned into that. I even danced en pointe for parts of it, even though Carabosse isn't supposed to, and between the rehearsals and the actual performance, I thought my feet were gonna fall off, but it was worth it.”

Arlo smiles, and Tina is thrilled by the wickedness of it. She thinks she even sees just a hint of fang. Arlo’s been so careful about showing his teeth, ever since he told her what happened to him, why he disappeared for so long, so it's somehow special for him to feel like he can show her even a hint of what he’s become.

“Professor Dacey was pissed, afterwards, of course,” Arlo laughs, but there’s an edge to it. He seems to shrink. From Arlo to Carabosse to Arlo again. He looks down at his hands as they work on Tina more than at her face. “He didn’t, y’know, say anything he could have gotten fired over, but he did rail about being left out of planning and the budget and all that rot. Got even madder when Demi pointed out we’d spent our own money on the costumes. I think if he was tall enough to look down on me, he would have.” He snorts, a bitter curl to his mouth. Tina thinks of it painted bold, dark purple, thinks of how it would look with those teeth behind it. She wonders if he’d let her do his makeup for the festival. She’s not nearly as good at details as he is, but she’s no slouch either.

“You should have let me put raw fish in his hubcaps,” Tina mutters, just to make Arlo laugh. It works, and she beams at him.

“Would have been a waste of fish,” he mumbles, sucking his teeth. He finally picks up a bright eyeshadow palette and starts waffling over colors. He’s quiet while he deliberates, but after a while, he sighs. “I liked being Carabosse,” he says, like it’s a secret. Like he’s trying very hard not to be ashamed.

“I wish I could have seen it,” Adam says, almost dreamily. Tina could scream. “I— We could have, I mean. All of us. In solidarity.”

“Smooth,” Felix whispers.

“I’m sure it was a phenomenal performance,” Nate adds helpfully. He’s taken the album from Felix to flip through to some of Arlo’s other shows. “The passion you have for your characters shines through in just photos. It’s quite impressive.”

“You should have gone pro,” Tina mutters. “You’d be a household name by now.”

Arlo snorts and bops her with the brush. How many bops is that now? She’s certainly on a roll today. “And who’d keep you in line back here?” he teases.

Tina squints up at him and sticks out her tongue. “Like you’ve ever even tried to keep me in line, you big softie. You love the chaos, just admit it.”

“I’ll admit you to the hospital when you do something stupid and get yourself hurt again, how about that?”

They bicker like children back and forth while Arlo finishes her makeup, a wash of pink, purple, and blue eyeshadow and matching lipstick, overlaid with a lustrous sparkle to her cheekbones and a cute little black heart-shaped beauty mark under one eye. Felix gets a bi flag heart to match her eyeshadow around one eye, and then the rest is a sort of confetti splash of sparkly stars and hearts in every color. Even Nate goes for the bi eyeshadow (Bi-shadow? She should have been saying that this whole time!), making him, Tina, and Felix a matching set, and Mason consents to a very simple pan flag on his cheek. Tina suspects Adam only allows the eyeshadow treatment so he can have Arlo cup his face all tenderly, but she keeps the thought (mostly) to herself. He looks good in pastels, she thinks when she sees the finished blue, pink, and white.

Arlo draws a little heart under his eye too. The heart in Tina's chest almost explodes with warmth.

And then Arlo disappears into the bathroom, leaving the rest of them to entertain themselves while he gets ready on his own. They go through the album some more, and Tina tells them all about her favorite shows, because she went to every single one she could manage, and got Arlo’s school friends to send her videos of the ones she couldn’t. Tina Poname is Arlo Priestley’s number one fan, and that will never change. Not even now that she's got some competition.

When Arlo comes out of the bathroom, they all look up in sync, and he stands there, shifting anxiously from foot to foot under the attention, and lifts his hands in a stilted shrug. “So?” he asks, smiling nervously. He’s changed clothes, too. Tight pants, big boots, a mesh-sleeved black shirt underneath his patch-and-pin-covered denim vest. His wrists jingle with chunky bracelets, and his hair is braided neatly over one shoulder. But his makeup is what really steals the show. That insanely sharp cat-eye, of course, but one eye is done up in blue, pink, and white, and the other in yellow, white, purple, and black. He smiles timidly. “I, uh, I couldn’t really decide on just one,” he says, sticking his gloved hands into the pockets of his vest. “I’m, um, I’m not sure which one’s really right for me yet, I guess?” He shrugs again, and Tina watches delightedly as Adam stands up slowly, his eyes on Arlo with such an awed intensity she wonders if he even remembers there’s other people in the room. Arlo keeps babbling as he approaches, the words tumbling nervously from his black-painted lips. “I sort of like matching with you, Adam, and I know they’re both fine, but I—”

Adam grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, yanks him down to his level, and silences him with a kiss. Tina throws her arms up in the air with an impulsive shriek of “WOO!” that Felix echoes even louder. They high-five over Mason’s head, and he looks like he wants to throw them both out the window. Nate sits by with a pleasant little smile, which only fades when he takes note of the clock.

Adam and Arlo are still kissing, Arlo’s hands cupped around the vampire’s cheeks and Adam clinging to his vest like he'll drown if he lets go. Tina thinks she might see a hint of tongue when Nate loudly clears his throat.

They break apart with an indecent smacking noise, and Tina yelps out a sharp laugh when she sees Arlo’s black lipstick smeared all around Adam’s mouth.

Nate crosses his arms and smiles dryly at them. “Why don’t you two go fix your faces,” he suggests. “The rest of us will make sure the car is packed for the festival.”

“Um, yes. You— We—” Arlo fumbles for a bit, touching his smeared lips, his eyes just a bit dazed. He and Adam look at each other, and then flee for the bathroom together.

Tina’s never been more excited for a festival in her life.

#the wayhaven chronicles #wayhavensummer #pride in wayhaven #tina poname #adam du mortain #a du mortain #felix hauville #f hauville #specialist agent mason #specialist agent m #nate sewell #n sewell #oc: arlo priestley #pidge writes #HELLO I AM FINISHING THIS AT 3:30 AM #I HAVE MY FIRST DAY OF MY NEW JOB TOMORROW #WISH ME LUCK #this turned out WAY longer than i meant it to but god was it fun #i hope you guys like it as much as i liked writing it #arlo playin w gender expression via ballet is my everything #the costume designs for carabosse can be SO GOOD #but some of them are SO BAD #ballet is like that #its very uuuuh traditional wrt its aesthetics and gender roles #and arlo and his friends were all like 'but what if not'#anyway title is v last minute bc *shrug*#tina gets to be the lilac fairy #i did so much reserach into this ballet y'all #the only thing i didnt do was watch the whole thing #tho i DID find it on yt so i could later....

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detective-grey · 3 years ago

Text

pumpkin patches and broken things

part 3 of "Wayhaven Frights - Connections" prompt "Harvest"

pairing: detective alexis "lex" crawford and adam du mortain

rating: t

summary: Lex has a thing for pumpkin patches and Adam has a thing for broken things.

read on ao3

The cool autumn wind brushed against her cheeks, lifting a few strands of mousy brown hair away from her face and dancing them through the breeze. The air smelled faintly of burnt wood and decay, that cold familiar scent that usually reminded one of late night bonfires, jewel colored leaves falling to the ground, hot ciders and mulled wines. A reminder of the end of a cycle, the buds of spring and the blooms of summer giving way to the harvests of fall and eventually the barren fields of winter.

The sky was that particular shade of icy blue that somehow only made an appearance in October and suddenly vanished once the grey tones of December spread through the atmosphere. Every now and then thin white clouds stretched their boney fingers across the sky, blocking out the false Sun that shone but offered no heat, and the shadows of late birds migrating south for the year dotted the ground.

Detective Alexis Crawford shoved her hands further into the pockets of her dark leather jacket and took a deep breath, enjoying the sting of the cool air in her throat. She closed her eyes and allowed herself this moment, this one singular moment of peace and quiet and-

“There you are!”

She flinched at the sudden noise, then kicked herself for her weakness.

She turned to find Unit Bravo walking towards her at varying strides. Farah led the pack in excitement, her golden eyes so at home in the late afternoon sun. She waved at Lex who made no effort to move in their direction but nodded at the motion. Nate trailed after Farah, his easy smile in place and his dark green jacket zipped up for the first time since Lex had known him. Morgan meandered behind everyone, somehow finding shadows to hide in even on the mostly vacant path, smoke from her lit cigarette twisting around her face.

Lex’s attention of course went straight to the actual leader of the group walking in the middle with an expression reminiscent of a frozen lake, calm ice on the surface with something deeper and more intense beneath. Adam had donned a black peacoat that accentuated his broad frame and squared shoulders, the dark fabric in stark contrast to his pale green eyes and blond hair. She told herself she noticed these things because it was her job to pay attention to details.

That she noticed the way his muscles rippled under the sleeves of his coat, however…

“See something ya like?”

Lex shifted her gaze to where Farah now stood next to her, watching with that annoyingly knowing smile. She rolled her eyes, causing Farah to burst into laughter as the others caught up.

“You guys are late,” she said, only somewhat trying to keep the annoyance she felt from lacing itself through her words. “How that’s possible given the fact that you literally have super speed, I’ll never know.”

“Blame that one,” Morgan accused, nodding her head in Farah’s direction.

“What? I just wanted to make sure I put on the proper clothes! I’ve never been to a pumpkin patch before, there were literally hundreds of options for me to sort through,” Farah explained, twirling around to show off her plaid skirt she had paired with wool leggings, boots, and a cardigan. She had a scarf wrapped around her neck as usual, though this one was a deep crimson red that matched the pattern of her skirt.

“It’s not really that big a deal, they’re just pumpkins,” Lex mumbled, turning to walk towards the entrance to the field where a few other Wayhaven residents stood waiting to gain access.

She hadn’t meant to mention her plan for the weekend to them, and she certainly hadn’t been prepared for everyone to come along. She didn’t consider herself to exactly be a “traditions” type of person, but for some damn reason she found herself back at this pumpkin patch at the beginning of October every year to find a stupidly large pumpkin to take home and carve. She made a whole day of it, usually spending an hour or two scouring the field for the perfect specimen before taking it home, cracking open a few beers (or whiskey, depending on the week), and taking a knife to the thing. She never claimed the title of “Artist” or “Supreme Pumpkin Carver”, indeed her designs and faces would never win any contests, but she found catharsis in the way she cleaned out the seeds, traced her patterns, cut into them with repetitive motions.

There was something to be said about the comfort she found in repeatedly stabbing something over and over, but she never lingered too longly on the thought.

Farah babbled excitedly as they walked towards the vendor. Lex fell into step beside Adam without even realizing it until his voice broke her concentration.

“Detective.”

She looked over at him, having to tilt her chin slightly up to meet his eyes.

“Agent,” she replied, matching his neutral tone.

After giving her a once over and seeming to be satisfied, Adam turned to face forward again and didn’t say another word. Lex knew better than to hold her breath expecting more from him, but for some reason the lack of so much as a “how are you?” stung. Annoyingly so.

She never quite knew where she stood with Adam. Most of the time she couldn’t stand the man, they fought each other tooth and nail on almost every single mission they went on, neither wanting to relinquish control over any situation. She loathed his arrogance, hated the way others automatically deferred to him for command like it was owed to him, meanwhile she’d had to fight her whole life for the scrap of command she held. Once, on a night that they’d spared one another more wounds to their respective prides, he had told her of his station in his previous life as the son of a noble. He had been born into power and he carried it well.

She envied and admired him for it. Both things she hated but couldn’t bury deep enough to forget.

There were other things, though. Things she genuinely appreciated about him. She understood his innate need to protect those he cared about, but the intensity with which he upheld that responsibility continued to surprise her. Never had she known someone with such ferocious loyalty paired with a cynical realism that rivaled her own. She even respected his physical prowess and intimidating presence, things that didn’t particularly phase her but that she could appreciate. Especially as she watched him move, a soldier groomed and transformed into the perfect predator. She should be afraid of him, terrified. And she was.

The feelings that had been stirring and building like kindling that would set fire and consume her terrified her more than anything she’d ever known.

“Detective Crawford! Always a pleasure to see you,” Terry, the owner of the pumpkin patch, called out as they made their way to the front of the line. He had to have been in his late sixties, and he’d been running this business every year for as long as Lex could remember. He’d always been kind to her, as a kid he’d let her get her pick of the field and never charged her anything.

“Hey,” Lex responded, nodding in his direction. She pulled her wallet out of her jacket pocket to pay the entrance fees for everyone as the owner continued.

“I see you brought them fancy agents with you this year, so glad to have you,” he continued, smiling genuinely at Unit Bravo, his eyes twinkling behind his large rimmed glasses. He caught sight of Lex pulling money out of her wallet and shook his head. “Absolutely not, Detective, I won’t see you pay another cent. Not after you’ve solved all those big cases recently.”

Had she more grace she might have blushed. Instead, she straightened her back and jutted her chin forward in what she could only hope would be seen as respectful defiance. “I can’t accept that, Terry. I will pay like everyone else, I’m no different nor more special than anyone.”

Morgan’s eye roll and Nate’s appreciative smile both irritated her, but she tried her best to ignore them. She laid a couple of bills on the table in front of Terry and thanked him before he could say anything else. He shook his head with an exasperated smile but waved them on through the entrance to the field.

Farah immediately began asking a million questions. “Which ones are the best ones?” “Do you think I should get a big one or a small one?” “What kind do you usually get?” “I didn’t know there were different colors, which ones carve better?”

Lex never counted patience as one of her greatest virtues and as much as she genuinely liked Farah and found at least some small appreciation for her...perkiness, she found herself just barely clinging on to whatever patience she actually did have.

Nate must have been a saint in another life because as if he could sense the calmness withering away in Lex, he pulled Farah down a far off lane in search of her very own pumpkin.

“Did you have any questions,” Lex asked Morgan probably more roughly than she should have, but Morgan could take it. She simply blew a puff of smoke towards Lex then turned and followed the other two.

Without bothering to look and see if he’d follow, Lex walked off in the opposite direction of the others and away from Adam.

“Are you angry at us for coming?”

He kept pace beside her as she carefully stepped over vines and divots in the hard dirt beneath their feet. There were a few other families out and about in the field, children running and laughing, parents bent over to pull pumpkins up, couples holding hands. She subconsciously looked over to watch Adam’s hands, casually swaying by his sides, before looking up to meet his eyes.

“Why do you ask?”

A somewhat bemused smile played at his lips. “Not that you ever give the warmest of greetings, but you haven’t exactly expressed much joy in seeing us today.”

“Oh.”

She tried to focus her attention on finding a goddamn pumpkin but how could she be expected to think about anything other than the fact that they were walking through a field on a nice day? Together? Or at least next to each other in a not-completely-hostile way?

“Detective, I-”

She rounded on him. “Look, far be it from me to prevent you all from picking a stupid pumpkin to take back to the warehouse and decorate or cook or what the fuck ever. I’m not mad that you guys came, in fact I think it’s smart for the people of Wayhaven to see you all out doing normal people things but please, just don’t bother me while I’m doing this.”

His eyes hardened. “If you didn’t want us here, you could have simply told us.”

She huffed and wanted to stomp her feet in frustration. Another thing she hated about him: he constantly made her feel everything so much more intensely.

“It’s not,” she took a breath and clenched her fingers into fists for a moment before breathing out and releasing some tension. “It’s not that I don’t want you here, I do. Want all of you, I mean. I mean I want you guys all here, with me.” Another breath. “Can we just find a pumpkin please?”

Lex turned away before he could reply and kept her eyes downcast. She could feel the moment he had caught up with her, matching her strides yet keeping enough distance to allow her the illusion of her own space. They continued on like that for several minutes, every now and then stopping to inspect one pumpkin or another.

“Rebecca and I used to come here every year.”

If she’d startled him with the willingness to give information, he hid it well. She for sure startled herself, even more so as she kept going.

“It’s no surprise she wasn’t exactly Mother of the Year, but one thing I could always rely on her for was taking me to pick a fucking pumpkin and then taking it home to carve. She stopped when I was about fourteen, too old for pumpkin picking I guess, but...I don’t know, I’d gotten so used to doing it every year that I just kept coming.”

Whether he felt her admission didn’t dignify a response or he just didn’t know what to say, Lex couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that he stayed silent for a while, maybe processing the information, maybe figuring out how best to respond. Maybe even just giving her the space to talk and say more if she so chose. She definitely wouldn’t, that she had already told him as much as she had mortified her. No, instead she again attempted to turn her attention to the field hoping to find anything at this point.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep traditions to yourself, especially ones as,” he paused, “intimate as this one.”

She scoffed. “Digging in the dirt is your idea of intimacy, Agent?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Hardly.”

They watched each other for a moment and then his eyes flicked up to the sky. “We might want to hurry this along.”

“Why,” she asked before following his gaze and finding massive dark grey clouds rolling in. They began swallowing the blue sky and in the distance she could hear the faint low rumble of thunder. “I don’t remember hearing anything about rain.”

“I doubt the weather would discuss its plans with you before changing, Detective.”

She rolled her eyes but followed him with renewed energy knowing that their time ran short now with the threat of a storm looming overhead. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Farah hoisting what must have been the largest pumpkin in the field into her arms and running back to the entrance with glee. Nate had found himself a medium-sized, perfectly round and spotless one that he kept in the crook of his elbow as he followed behind her. As far as Lex could tell, Morgan seemed content to simply smoke and make a snide remark here and there.

“What about this one?”

She swiveled back to him and when she saw his chosen specimen, she crossed her arms and looked at him incredulously.

"Seriously? There are literally hundreds of others in this field, why the fuck is that the one you pick," she asked dryly.

He shrugged. "I like this one."

Adam had pointed to a small, unassuming pumpkin that had almost been completely camouflaged by the leaves and vines of its neighbors. There wasn’t anything particularly special about it, in fact as far as Lex could tell it was one of the ugliest ones in the whole patch, discolored with spots of damage dotting its surface and roughing its edges.

But Adam had seen some sort of value in it, he had chosen it, so maybe it was worth something…

“Fine, sure, grab it so we can get out of here.”

She turned on her heels to leave, but felt a hand on her shoulder. She fought her initial instinct to break the hand and instead looked back at him. The look he gave her threatened to pull her in as the Moon pulled the tides.

“Alexis, I-”

He shook his head as if waking from a dream then removed his hand.

“I wanted to thank you for sharing this with us. I know the others have enjoyed the day so far and are looking forward to the other activities we have planned.”

She stared at him, taking in every detail, every line of his face and every stitch of his coat. For some reason she wanted to remember this moment, the moment where she realized that Adam had a thing for choosing broken things. After saving the mental picture and framing it in the back of her mind, she simply said, “just harvest the pumpkin, Adam.”

#wayhaven frights #the wayhaven chronicles #detective lex crawford #adam du mortain

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homeformyheart · 4 years ago

Text

everything - adam du mortain x f!detective (twc)

day 7 - pain

author’s note: i’m trying to keep the prompts for this month relatively light and it took me a while to think of something for ‘pain’ that wasn’t angsty, so i hope you enjoy!

copyright: all characters, except my oc detective, are owned by mishka jenkins @seraphinitegames. series/pairing: the wayhaven chronicles – adam du mortain x f!detective (regina bishop) rating/warnings: 16+; swearing, pregnancy / childbirth word count: 1.9k based on/prompt: day 7 – pain from #28dateswithunitbravo challenge by @wayhavenmonthly summary: regina goes into labor while adam is away on a mission.

everything

regina stepped back to admire her handiwork with a satisfied smile, farah standing next to her with an arm around her shoulders.

“it looks really good, don’t you think?” she mused, taking in the soft lavender walls of the nursery decorated with plants and baby animals.

“you know adam’s going to kill you when he finds out you did any sort of physical labor while he was gone,” farah said, helping regina move the ladder and paint supplies to the corner of the room.

“you’d be surprised what i’ve been able to get away with,” regina shrugged, rubbing her large belly. “besides, by the time he comes back, the baby’ll practically be here.”

at thirty-eight weeks, she couldn’t see her toes and had adopted what she affectionately described as the “penguin waddle.” she groaned as she lowered herself on the couch, motioning to farah to help her settle her feet on top of a cushion.

“is that why you insisted he go on this emergency mission? so you could finish decorating the nursery on your own?” farah asked.

regina smiled smugly as she turned on the television. “about that emergency mission…”

farah turned to look at her. “don’t tell me…?”

“he and nate were getting on my nerves with all their fussing! so i asked rebecca if there was a low-risk assignment out of town she could give them that wouldn’t raise questions,” she said with a shrug.

her jaw dropped. she was both surprised that regina would mislead adam given how worried he’s been the past few months, and proud of her audacity.

“i’m guessing they’ve been getting on her nerves too. or maybe my dad was the same way. either way, she agreed in a heartbeat,” regina said.

farah shook her head fondly. “oh, i knew there was a reason i liked you,” she said, chuckling.

regina felt a sharp kick in her stomach and rubbed a hand soothingly over the spot. their son was due any day now and she was incredibly excited to meet him. it took a while for adam to come around to the idea of being a father, more so because of how it represented her human mortality more than anything else. even though the concept of family had taken on new meaning when she met unit bravo, she still felt like something was missing.

she had always wondered how different things would be had she gotten to know her father. or if her mother had been around more. they always had a good enough relationship, but it didn’t make up for the fact that for most of her upbringing, she didn’t really feel like she had a family.

and she wanted that so much for her and adam. even knowing how he felt about humans and about her mortality, it was still something she had hoped to have one day. multiple children preferably, since being an only child was incredibly lonely. it had taken a long time for adam to come around to the idea.

if she was being truly honest with herself, she wanted him to have a family line again, one that he could look after if she chose to stay human. they hadn’t talked about that possibility yet, and she certainly hadn’t thought about it too much, but she knew they’d have to decide eventually.

a sharp pain in her stomach made her gasp loudly. farah’s head whipped toward her.

“what’s wrong?”

regina just shook her head and pressed her lips together, squeezing her eyes shut until the pain had passed. “i think it’s just braxton hicks contractions. i’ll be fine.”

farah’s brow furrowed in concern and she didn’t look convinced. “maybe i should call adam. or maybe we should get you to the hospital, just in case.”

“let’s not worry him yet,” she said, wincing as she tried to stand up. “i’ll walk around a bit and get some water, that should help.”

farah leaped up from the couch and gave regina her arm for support. she rolled her eyes but took it anyway as they walked to the kitchen, glad that she wasn’t alone right now.

* * * * * adam wiped his hands with the towel nate had handed to him after they secured their charge in the back of the suv. he thought it was odd that agent bishop would assign them a mission as simple as transporting a rare supernatural breed back to the facility, but he wasn’t one to question orders. the mission wasn’t as simple as they all thought it would be given the creature, which on the outside looked like a hybrid sabretooth tiger and panther, had large wings that could send any one of them flying.

they were able to sedate the creature before it had a chance to escape, but adam made a mental note to recommend the agency build stronger cages for transporting such creatures. he was relieved that they were done with time to spare and he was hopeful he could be back with regina before the baby was born.

the ringing of his agency cell phone broke through the quiet of the car. at the sound of farah’s panicked voice, his grip on the phone tightened, the plastic beginning to crack.

“what? when? where? i’ll be right there!”

nate looked over at adam with concern, sharing a knowing look with morgan, who stepped out of the car.

“go, we’ll finish the mission and meet you at the hospital,” nate said, squeezing adam’s shoulder reassuringly. “you’ll be faster on foot.”

adam gave nate a relieved nod and stepped out of the car. morgan slid into the driver’s seat, adam disappearing before she could even turn on the ignition.

* * * * * rebecca had used her connections to make sure that regina had a private room to herself as they waited for adam and the doctor to arrive.

“where is he?” regina whined, wincing at the next contraction that hit. rebecca handed her more ice chips, which she took gratefully.

“on that mission you sent him on?” farah teased, pacing around the small room, choosing to ignore regina’s glares and rebecca’s pinched sighs.

“just breathe, regina,” rebecca said in her best soothing voice.

regina was getting really tired of being told to breathe. “can someone just call him again please?”

adam stormed into the hospital, slowing his pace so as not to arouse suspicion. he barely noticed the blinding, fluorescent lights, given he had only one thing on his mind.

“where is my wife? regina bishop-du mortain. she’s in labor,” he said brusquely, to the receptionist on duty, who raised an eyebrow at his tone.

he mumbled an apology before sprinting to the room they told him to go to, only letting out a sigh of relief once he opened the door and saw that regina was fine.

well, as fine as she could be given the amount of pain she was in.

“no one told me this would hurt this much!” she cried, feeling overwhelmed as the contractions began to come stronger.

“i’m here,” he said quickly, giving her a kiss on the forehead and grabbing her hand.

rebecca gave him an understanding nod and stood up from her seat, motioning for farah to follow her out. “i’m going to go get some coffee and check in with the team.”

“i’m sorry, i came as fast as i could,” adam murmured, wincing at the sound of regina’s cries as another contraction hit her.

she gripped his hand tightly and he was thankful that his vampire abilities allowed him to withstand her crushing grip. he was pretty sure a human could not handle being a pregnant woman’s stress ball. nate and morgan walked in, faces pinched at the sterile smell and fluorescent lights, just as regina let out another pained gasp.

“i’ll take getting stabbed with needles by murphy over this. please make it stop!” she whined, tossing her head from side-to-side as adam tried to mop the sweat from her brow with a towel.

morgan scoffed. “you don’t remember shit from that night, do you? we all thought you were done for.”

regina glared at her. “have you ever pushed a bowling ball out of your body? no? then shut up!”

nate covered up a laugh with a cough, smiling as morgan let out a huff and stormed out of the room.

“if i could bear this pain for you, i would in a heartbeat,” adam murmured, drawing soothing circles on the back of her hand with his thumb.

“while i appreciate the sentiment, that doesn’t help me! where is my doctor?!” she snapped, trying to take deep, calming breaths.

“i’ll go find out,” nate offered, eager to avoid the pregnant woman’s ire.

it didn’t take long before the doctor arrived and announced that she was ready to head to the delivery room. she held adam’s hand tightly on the way to the room, grateful that the doctor and nurses insisted that everyone else needed to stay in the waiting area. she didn’t think she could even handle rebecca being in the room.

the amount of relief she felt instantly evaporated once she was told to start pushing. if it wasn’t for adam, holding firmly onto her hand and distracting her with stories from the most memorable missions he led before arriving in wayhaven, she was sure she would’ve passed out from stress and exhaustion hours ago.

“i don’t think i can do this,” she whispered, tears in her eyes, as the doctor encouraged her keep pushing.

adam wiped the sweat from her forehead and leaned in close. “yes, you can. you have survived a blood transfusion, multiple kidnappings, and protected everyone around you time and time again. you are stronger than you give yourself credit for. you can do this.”

regina nodded weakly, but with a renewed look of determination on her face. she gave everything she had in one final push and instantly fell back in exhausted relief at the sound of the baby’s cries echoing throughout the room. she cracked open one eye to see adam cradling their son close despite the smells and sounds that must be overwhelming his senses.

by the time she was back in her room, she was feeling a little more like her normal self. adam kept saying how proud he was of her and how amazing she was, and she was just happy to finally have the family she always wanted. she didn’t bother to hold back the tears that spilled when she held her son for the first time, or seeing the overwhelmed look on rebecca’s face when she got to hold her grandchild. each member of unit bravo took turns holding their son, and even morgan’s grumpy demeanor softened at the new addition.

“i was thinking we could name him jacques rook du mortain,” she said softly, leaning into adam’s side as he wrapped his arm around her, having perched himself on the bed to keep her close.

he looked down at her, eyes shining with unshed tears, moved by the significance of her suggestion.

“thank you,” he whispered, leaning in to give her a kiss. “for giving me everything and more, my love.”

* * * * * permatag: @kelseaaa; @kat-tia801; @anotherbeingsworld; @crackerdumortain; @pearlsandsteel; @gloynporslen; @sosolenoo; @alyssalauren; @wayhavenots; @gingerbreton; @takemyopenheart; @writer-ish; @fhauvilles;

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inzannatea-arts · 4 years ago

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#21 Days of Nathan - A Recap Days 1-10

I just wrapped up the @izzyandlouie sparked #21daysofNathan on Instagram and thought it might be fun to recap it all in one place. Tumblr seemed like the best place to do that, so here we are.

Day 1: Movie I’d like to see Nathan in.

I'd Ike to see Nathan Page and Essie Davis take the roles originally played by Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn in How To Steal A Million and I'd like master 'ship builder Tony Tilse to direct.

Day 2: Favorite Jack Quote

It's actually a favorite Shakespearean quote from Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra: "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. Other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry. Where most she satisfies." Nathan has a very...um...moving delivery of the line.

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Day 3: Favorite moment from Nathan’s Instagram

I feel like this is a lot of people’s favoite. It’s just so pure and sweet and perfect. Nathan is clearly a genuinely lovely human and the koala is being the adorable idiot that is so purely koalaness. Just perfect.

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More under the fold

Day 4: Favorite Nathan role

Look, Nathan is a very talented actor and I have enjoyed his work in roles that I may (or more likely would not) have discovered had it not been for his work on Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. But it was Jack (and Phryne) that compelled me to get on an airplane exactly a year ago today (Posted Feb 16, 2021) to fly to the other side of the planet just to see a movie. It was this character and the other characters of the show that compelled me to send a lot of money just to invest in something that mattered to me on a deep level. It's Jack and the characters surrounding him that inspire me to create every day. Thank you Nathan Page for breathing life into Kerry Greenwood’s and Every Cloud Production’s Creation.

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Day 5: Best Hair Moment

Nathan is what I consider a "hair actor". I was unfamiliar with the term until my cousin and cousin-in-law who are also working professional actors used the term to describe the male spouse. Essie is as well (though she did wear a wig in CoT). The hair helps embody the character. Between roles, it is just hair, but in the role, the hair is a character in its own right. When the Miss Fisher Movie Kickstarter kicked off, we were presented with this character. Nathan who was just as desperate as we were to get the band back together. He was as far from Jack as we'd ever seen him. We wanted... nay... NEEDED... to return Nathan to a Jack-state, post-haste. It. Was. Genius. I'm not sure who actually dreamt up the marketing campaign, but I developed a serious marketing crush on new Marketing Director Drew, imagining he had a hand.

I don’t mean to be cynical about the whole thing. I’m sure it wasn’t as calculated as all that, I just think someone had the smarts to see they had an opportunity, and seized it. As someone who has been involved in marketing to varying degrees for decades, I was deeply appreciative.

Day 6: Favorite Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries Moment

Soooo...this is may not my very favorite... but y'all... how can I pick? Seriously? This is pretty close to the top "reasons I admire Nathan" I edited the scene to only show his face journey because that's what I'm in love with here. The dawning realization, the perturbation, the wrestling for control of his emotions, thinking he has it together until he looks at her again... 😙👌 Perfection. Master class. Bravo!

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Day 7: Favorite Nathan Quote

Mine is this little story from 6 questions with Nathan Page from the nathanpagetheactor.com website. Nathan is talking about both delightful and disturbing food he's consumed in his travels. Go watch the whole thing. It's a thing of joy... But it's the "Eelgut" that gets quoted on the regular around the house.

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Day 8: Character you’d like Nathan to portray

I would like to see Nathan as a high ranking Peacekeeper Officer who has some sort of secret personal agenda but is who is morally ambiguous. Mostly, I want more Farscape, and I want more opportunities for Nathan and I think he'd enjoy it. Plus I'd like him to work more with Tony Tilse who must be involved in this reboot. Space needs more Australian accents. Bring back Farscape!

Day 9: Favorite Fan Art

It's probably not cool to choose my own fan art, but Nathan is probably my favorite fan art subject. He’s just so... interesting looking. Of the multitude of drawings I've done over the years, these remain my favorite. Hedgehog Jack was a particular favorite collaborative work borne out of a conversation with @scruggzi back in the day.

Day 10: Book you’d love Nathan to narrate.

This suggestion The Making of Martin Sparrow came directly from Nathan Page back in 2018. It’s a fascinating story filled with excellent characters that would be fun to hear Nathan interpret. He recommended it highly, and it would be great to put his mouth where our money is.

Looks like the Tumblr app won’t let me add more videos, so I’ll split this list in half.

#21daysofnathan #20daysofnathan #nathan page #jack robinson #farscape #the making of martin sparrow #essie davis #phryne fisher #miss fisher's murder mysteries #audrey hepburn #peter o'toole #how to steal a million #fan art #miss fisher fan art #koalas #stupid koala

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amlovelies · 4 years ago

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Finders-Keepers

for @wayhavenmonthly Fall for Unit Bravo

Day 9: Jacket (yes I know I’m late)

Pairing: Mason/Serena Willis (not a detective)

rating: Mature, because M flirting and banter but no real smut

words:1021

a/n: My tab key seems to be broken so please excuse my wonky paragraph breaks.

read on AO3

“Can you take Mason’s coat back to the warehouse. He left it here yesterday.” Dinah asks as I’m getting ready to leave the police station.

“Guess that explains why he was such a grump this morning. It must have been a cold patrol.” I say as I reach out to grab it. The leather is soft and buttery under my hands. Like most things Mason owns it’s well worn and comfortable looking. I guess it would have to be with his sensory issues. I could only image how much the tag on a shirt or bad stitching would mess with him.

I’m almost out the door when I turn to ask, “hey, do you think I could get away with a joke about his memory?”

“If anyone could it’s you. He seems very-” She has that look on her face the one I’ve been noticing more and more. Something a little curious and maybe a touch smug. I don’t like it much, “-fond of you lately.”

“Ha hardly. Just because we’re sleeping together doesn’t mean he likes me any better than anyone else. It just means I make bad life choices.”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about that because, gross.” Dinah makes a retching face to really drive it home. “I meant more the way he always sits with you.”

I scowl at her.

She laughs, “I was about to say that I don’t really get the two of you, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Mason make that exact same face.”

“Bye!” I yell as I walk out the door unwilling to continue the conversation. I’m not sure why she is determined to make it a bigger deal than it is. We’re having fun. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

Once I get back to the warehouse, I have a choice to make. I could be a normal functioning adult and just give him the jacket, or I could not do that and fuck with him a little. Just a little, I don’t have a plan, but I’ll figure it out as I go.

As I’m walking down the hallway, I can hear Farah and Mason’s voices coming from the game room. Without thinking about it too much, I slip the jacket on. It’s warm and I swim in it a little. It smells like him and I feel a fluttering begin in my stomach as I inhale the familiar aroma. It brings with it a wave of memories and I have to take a few moments to savor them, and then a few more moments to let my heart rate return to normal.

They are deep into a game of darts and don’t even notice me when I enter. It looks like Farah is winning. I grab a drink from the fridge and lean against the wall to watch and wait.

Farah notices first. A huge grin breaks out on her face. “Nice jacket, Serena.”

“Do you like it? Some idiot left it at the police station. I think it looks pretty good on me, hate to see it go to waste in the lost and found.” I say returning the smile.

Mason finally turns to see what we are talking about. I expected a scowl or a grimace, but I don’t know how to describe the look on his face. His eyes track over my body. I put my hands on my hips and smirk at him. His eyes meet mine and for half a second there’s something there that cause a lurch in my chest, but then it’s gone.

“Well you know what they say, finders-keepers.” Farah says with a laugh.

“Are you two done?” he asks with a roll of his eyes.

“oh, I’m sorry. Did I interrupt your game? I wouldn’t think you’d be so eager to get back to losing.” I want to get back to the teasing and joking around and try and forget that twinge I’d felt. It’s just Dinah’s digging getting into my head. I’m not about to let myself start thinking that way and ruin something fun.

“Not having a very lucky day are you, Mason? First, I kick your butt at darts, and now you’ve lost your jacket to Serena.” Farah says still laughing.

“Oh, I think I’ll still get lucky.” Mason says with a smirk that sends a thrill through my body. Now that’s what I’m used to.

“You’re still not getting the jacket back.”

Mason closes the space between us and raises one arm to rest on the wall above my head, “not usually this hard to get you out of your clothes, Sweetheart.”

“Well, you haven’t given me a reason yet.” I say meeting his intense gaze my heart pounding, anticipation and desire coursing through my veins. He knows because of course he does with his stupid vampire super senses.

“Pretty sure I’ve given you a reason a few times already.” He reaches out to brush a piece of hair behind my ear. His touch is light, teasing. I wet my lips and am satisfied to see how much the motion draws his attention.

“Hmmm, maybe you’ll have to jog my memory.” I reply as I reach out and place my hand against the firm muscles of his chest.

The tension of the moment is broken by a retching sound from Farah, “alright I’m out if y’all going to keep talking that way. Only so much nasty I can handle in a day.”

Heat floods my face. To be honest, once Mason had gotten within arms reach of me, I had completely forgotten she was in the room.

“Farah, wait,” I call out as I push off the wall, brush past Mason, and go to follow her. I’m not quite ready to lose the jacket yet. It’s very comfy. Plus, it’s fun to frustrate him.

“Hey,” Mason calls out as I’m almost out the door.

I turn back expecting some growly sarcastic remark.

“It does look good on you,” he says with a surprising amount of sincerity in his voice. As he meets my eyes, I feel that same twinge in my chest. Fuck.

tagging: @morgans-ass-freckles and @agentnatesewell (let me know if you would like to be/not be tagged)

#the wayhaven chronicles #twc #fallforunitbravo #twc mason #scribblings #fanfiction #ns*fwish #lovelieswrites #mason/Serena Willis

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kevkesblog · 4 years ago

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Translation: Julian Brandt Interview for “11 Freunde” (June 18, 2020)

Attention: long post! Julian talks about overblown salaries in football, why he even stays at two-star hotels, why he thinks football should not be dramaticly reformed and why you won’t see him in Gucci clothing & more.

Julian Brandt, what do you miss the most at the moment?

Ju: Just going outside and sitting in a café with some friends. Enjoying a bit more freedom. But I think many people have the same wishes right now.

Yet, the break because of the Corona pandemic seem to have lifted you. You were involved in all four goals during the 4-0 win against Schalke.

Ju: I would still have preferred it, without the break. I mean it’s like this: sometimes you need just a few days to arrive at a place, sometimes it takes months. Feeling well in a city, a club and with my teammates is important. I’m a football player that needs a comfortable environment.

How was it for you at BVB in the beginning?

Ju: There were definitely no fireworks at the beginning. But honestly, I kind of expected to need more time. I think thats normal after five and a half years at Bayer Leverkusen. It was a great time there, but in the end it was a comfort zone for me. I switched to BVB because I wanted to do something new.

And because Marco Reus asked you.

Ju: Many people were in favour of me going to Dortmund. Even my mother wore yellow pullovers astonishingly often, during the time before my transfer happend. And Marco asked me at the national team, that’s true. I felt honored, but I saw a chance playing for a team which plays competitively for the title until the end of the season and is represented in the Champions League regularly, those were the main reasons for my transfer.

What else is different in Dortmund than in Leverkusen?

Ju: Dortmund is bigger in almost every regard. Even the stadium is enormous and it becomes even more imposing with people in it. Building such a stadium somewhere is one thing. Brining it to live however like in Dortmund – that’s an art in and of itself. You don’t get that very often in Europe. Leverkusen – and I have to be honest here – has never been on my radar for me as a boy. But it’s the perfect club if you want to develop as a young player. I already suspected this after I talked to Rudi Völler for the first time.

I was told, you said „Rudi Völler has honest eyes“ to your father afterwards.

Ju: He has a sincere attitude. I would have believed everything he said. And his promises became reality. We were playing attractive and successful football. And you don’t get so much pressure as a young player from the outside. The media landscape for example is much smaller in Leverkusen than elsewhere.

Do you miss the fans in the stadium in Dortmund?

Ju: I was never that guy who was aware of stuff that happend on the stands. But after the game against Inter Mailand, where we were behind 0-2 before the break and won 3-2 in the end – I recognized how important football is for the people here and how much they were willing to support us. It was so honest, authentic and direct. One of the best games thus far.

Before that Michael Rummenigge critized you as „C-youth player“. That was after the Inter game where you scored as well. Was that a key moment?

Ju: Everybody can voice their opinions that’s totally fine for me. I’m not a person who jumps on it. And I wasn’t really satisfied with my game as well. Perhaps the 2-1 win against Gladbach a few days before was a turning point. Not only, because I scored twice, but rather because I was able to play on the ten for the first time. After that my game became better.

You said in the beginning of your time at BVB „Peter Bosz liked the risk. We don’t really have that here in Dortmund“. Did the way you play now changed?

Ju: We play nice football under Lucien Favre. He likes an offensive tactic. Adding that, we score alot of goals. But Peter Bosz was a special coach in that regard because we played a modern version of football with a high amount of ball possesion – often over 80 percent. And we not only wanted to keep the ball all the time, while playing until our opponent gets tired like it’s the case with tiki-taka football. We were always on the attack. At BVB we put more emphasis on the defensive at the beginning. It was a change for me, since I wanted to have the ball and not running behind him all the time.

Is football an elegant game?

Ju: My room as child was full of „Bravo“-magazine posters with offensive players. Nedved, Robinho, Del Piero and the best among the best: Ronaldinho. I liked it whenever players carry their street football skills to the pitch. Whenever somebody is looking for something spectacular. I want to gamble and not just act in a rigid system.

Doesn’t modern tactics prevent something like this?

Ju: You are basically being funneled at youth football academies with: receive the ball, passing, receiving, passing. There a strict requirements you have to follow. But I think good teams need self-confident players, saying „No, I won’t fit in, but I rather go into a one-on-one situation“. We have such guys in our national team. Leroy Sané or Timo Werner. Kai Havertz is a player who has a street football mentality too. Often it looks very easy, but it’s not. It just passed over into blood.

You are wearing the jersey number 10 at the national team. Like you also wore at Leverkusen. Does that do something with you?

Ju: I feel lighter in some sense. Perhaps because I know that you have to earn the number ten. Not like in the past, but I do think it has a certain meaning yes.

We heard you don’t like to talk about your strengths. Why?

Ju: I think, it looks like I’m a show off. I have enough self-confidence already.

Yet you do know that you can shoot really good. Who taught you?

Ju: Many things happened because I just tried. I even knew as a ten-year old boy: if I want to become a great football player I have to be able to shoot well with both feet. So, for weeks I shoot with my left foot on our lawn. Shot, flank, pass. It helped a lot. I met Federico Palacios during my youth time in Wolfsburg. He taught me insane techniques. I had a phase were I was obsessively training my first contact: not trying to stop the ball between the lines, but rather take the ball without defender nor midfielder getting the ball instead.

What are your weaknesses?

Ju: My headers. But I’m currently working on it and I often score. At least without opponent (laughs). Some people say I can work more on my defensive work. And yes, there is some truth to it, even after I already worked on it for quite some time. The thing is: I’m not an aggressive person, its not who I am. But of course, I understand whenever coaches say I need to have a certain minimum amount of aggressive behavior on the pitch.

Do you have a career plan?

Ju: No, everything I do, I do spontaneously.

But everything you do looks so reasonable: youth football for your home club. Training at a football academy in Wolfsburg. Professional debut at Bayer Leverkusen, your transfer to BVB a year ago…

Ju: Honestly: I could not have imagined going to VfL Wolfsburg as well at the beginning. Why should a boy do this, when he basically grew up just a 20 minute bike ride away from the Weser stadium in Bremen and was standing in the fan curve in his youth?

Because Werder [Bremen] overlooked you?

Ju: That’s not true. I even got invited to a try-out training. But then I looked at some other academies. I wasn’t only looking at VfL Wolfsburg. For example I looked at FC St. Pauli as well. Yet, I had the best feeling with Wolfsburg.

Why?

Especially during the ages 15 to 18 a lot is happening: you grow, your muscle mass is increasing, you slowly get to play with the professionals. On the other hand, many doors are opening. Your friends go partying for example. I liked being on a football academy for two and a half years. You couldn’t leave the campus after 11 o’clock in the evening. Apart from that we were very successful and won the German a-youth championship. But I can still remember how perplexed my parents were at the breakfast table, back when I told them about my decision to join Wolfsburg.

You are being called the “Anti-Star” of the business quite often. Does that do something with you?

Ju: Many people seem to think it’s probably because I have no tattoos and my father is my agent. But to be honest: there are some football player clichées I fit in. I like fast cars. I like playing playstation and I have 40 pairs of shoes in my closet. I just try not to pretend to be someone else. I wouldn’t look good in a Gucci-pullover.

Others like to call you “premature”. You were allowed to train with the professionals at the age of 15 in Wolfsburg. How did you do that?

Ju: That was insane and unreal. I was riding my bike to the training ground one day and the assistant coach Bernd Hollerbach took me to his side and said: “Introduce yourself to the coach”. So, I went into his office. “Hello Mr. Magath, I’m Julian from the under-17 team.” Of course, I was suspecting he already knew me otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten an invitation. But he was just staring at the television. After a while – it felt like an eternity – he looked at me, didn’t say a word, total silence and then he turned away. And then I was sneaking out of the room.

Magath wanted to test you?

Ju: I was unsettled a bit, but I wasn’t thinking about it anymore on the pitch. It doesn’t matter who is on your side, or whether your opponent is twenty years older than you and who your father is.

Did you nutmeg someone?

Ju: I would have been beaten for that. On the other hand: the pain fades away, the nutmeg stays (laughs). I remember I unintentionally shoot a ball into Marvin Hitz’s face.

How many agents were lining up at your doorstep at the time?

Ju: I stopped counting it after a while. I don’t think all agents are bad but I don’t need one at the moment. I have my father. He may not be Mino Raiola with thousands of contacts all over the world. But he doesn’t need them.

Nevertheless: this son-father-constellation also has it’s potential conflicts…

Ju: Our family sticks together – we are very harmonic and strong. I can’t remember a time where we were had an argument. I lived together with my brother in Cologne. I also have a connection with my father because of football. He used to play for the first team at SC Borgfeld – which was also my first club. I still remember: we went into the clubhouse whenever the Champions League was on. It was the best day of the week.

Now it’s about big business. Do you know your own worth?

Ju: It was downgraded since the outbreak of the pandemic. I read that on so some sites.

But it’s still 40 million euros. What does such a number do with you?

Ju: I can handle that because I can manage those numbers quite well. There is a lot money floating around in football. And I know its not easy to comprehend it with normal standards anymore. We live in our own bubble in that regard. The salaries in football are in no relation to what normal people earn – even with football being the greatest sport on earth. But why is that the case? Because sponsors are flushing so unbelievable high amounts of money into football. I think it’s important not to make the sport a luxury item. It has to stay affordable. In the stadium as well as in front of the TV.

Explain to us: why does a professional football player negotiate whether he should get 10 or 11 million euros per year?

Ju: It shows how greedy people can be sometimes. But that’s not football specific. It’s as unfair as the richest one percent of the world’s population owning more than half of the world’s wealth, right?

Could this crisis perhaps be a chance in order for football to calm down?

Ju: Perhaps in the short term. For the next one or two years. If any. I can’t imagine a player like Mbappé being sold next year for 80 million euros. Someone will always pay those insane sums of money.

How do you ground yourself?

Ju: Through my family and friends. Many are studying or doing an apprenticeship. It’s never about money when we talk, I just like having a great time with them. We don’t need a luxury vacation. But one time: we went to Mallorca for four or five days just as we qualified for the Champions League with Bayer Leverkusen. We stayed at a normal two-star-hotel, one room with a bed and a bathroom – that was it. We went to the beach and relaxed.

Has there never been a situation where a friend or family member had to take you back to the ground?

Ju: No. I can’t remember that I ever reacted arrogant or snooty. Or a situation where I thought: “Wow. That’s not who you are”. I’m fully aware of my very privileged life. In short: my greatest worry is whether we will win or loose on the weekends. It’s important to be thankful and to remind yourself what you got every once in a while.

Why do you have to remind yourself stuff like that all the time?

Ju: In order for it never to become normal. I know cheese costs about 69 cents at the grocery store and a different one costs 1,29 euros. But if a tool or device breaks down I sometimes just buy myself a new one. Whereas in the past I would have repaired it by myself.

But is football still the same game you fell in love with as a kid?

Ju: Absolutely. The game itself hasn’t really changed much. Okay, we have the goal line technology – which I support. And we got the video assistant referee, were people can argue. I abstain in that question. Once in a while, new ideas are being floated: like reducing the playtime to 60 minutes, new tournaments, elite leagues – I think it’s all bullshit. Keep football like it is. The way we learned it. With all its faults and tricky aspects. Even if something goes wrong.

Like during the World Cup 2018. Did you know that you could be the first DFB-team leaving the tournament after the group stage?

Ju: At some point he heard of it. It doesn’t really look good on your vita but it happened. Perhaps we needed this in order for something new to emerge. You have to remember: other great football nations also failed in similar ways. Italy, Spain or France all crashed out of the group stage after they won the World Cup.

Did the photo with Mesut Özil and Erdogan brought some unrest into the team?

Ju: The fact that almost all reporting was revolving around that topic was irritating sometimes. Don’t get me wrong: I think its important for the media to cover political topics extensively and with background stories. But I remember after the game against Sweden – after we barely won because of Toni Kroos free kick: shortly after the game you get asked whether the poor performance during the first 75 minutes were due to the photo – and you thinking: why don’t we talk about the game? Mesut became the poster boy for the disappointing World Cup. That’s nonsense. We all played shitty.

During the Confed-Cup the year before, many young players were in the team. At the World Cup the established players came back. Did Löw put his trust into the wrong players in Russia?

Ju: You can come to that conclusion afterwards, but you don’t know it in advance. I could fully understand Low though. He was loyal and in some cases he felt some gratitude. He couldn’t and he didn’t want to replace a World Cup winner from 2014 with a young player. The way we were defeated at the World Cup was not foreseeable. Because we also played great football between 2014 and 2018.

The team made it to the semifinals at the EURO 2016 and you became second with the Olympic football team in Rio.

Ju: A great experience with a team that was just thrown together. A contribution of Horst Hrubesch.

What makes him special?

Ju: He is just great, the guy! He’s from a different generation which you can tell with a lot of things around him. Once he wanted to show me how to shot from the side. I almost tore my muscle fiber doing it. But he manages it very well forming a team with young players. He’s a very free coach and very direct. He always called me lazy (laughs). And he has a very nice and dry sense of humor.

An example?

Ju: Me and the Bender-twins were sitting together shortly before the semifinal against Nigeria. He came up and said: “Guys, losing today doesn’t make any sense anymore.” A funny sentence, but also true if you think about it.

Julian Brandt, you made over 200 Bundesliga games, played Champions League and participated in one World Cup. You just turned 24. Do you even still have time to suck it all in and enjoy it?

Ju: Football is quick. I can still remember coming to Leverkusen – as if it was yesterday: my first game for the under 23 team against Essen. My Bundesliga debut against Schalke a week later. That was a little more than six years ago already. Crazy. Veteran players always say: “Enjoy it, because quickly your career will be over.” But how should you enjoy it? A game every four or five days. New photos, new events. You don’t have an awful lot of time to let everything sink in for a moment. I usually do that on new years eve. On a friend’s balcony. I even get sentimental then.

#julianbrandt #julian brandt #bayerleverkusen #borussiadortmund #bundesliga #bvb #dfb #diemannschaft #german nt

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smalltowndetective · 4 years ago

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31 Days of Wayhaven-Strong

@31daysofwayhaven

Admittedly kind of nervous of posting this one, hopefully it turned out okay!

(The Fae as showed here are likely wrong. I have been digging through Sera’s asks for more information about them, but at the current moment, there is just not much that is known about them. I tried my best to show them in the best way possible, so I hope that it worked out!)

Ao3 Link

Title: Quiet Strength

Pairing: Felix and Thea

Words: 2.5k

It was a wonder to Thea how she ever became a detective.

Back at the police academy, she was known for being a bit of a weakling, the “little flower” of the cadets, and it did not help that she was the shortest out of all of them. Thea hated everything to do with any amount of blood and gore, and while she learned how to use a gun, she never had (and likely never would) shoot at a live target with it, and to add all on top of that, she had no combat skills whatsoever.

She was not half bad at the deduction courses, anything about knowledge and critical thinking coming easier to her, but where Thea really shined was her skill with people.

Not so much with interrogations, unfortunately, the stress of the situation often getting to her, and the fact that she was probably the least intimidating person in existence, but with the people that came into the station. Thea was the one that the officers sent all of the grieving families toward, saying that she always seemed to know the right thing to say, but she never felt like she did. She just gave them a shoulder to cry on, and did her best to stay calm when they were not as receptive, knowing that she was seeing them on what was likely the worst day of their life.

Thea had been told constantly that she would never fit in with the big city cops, but she never let that bother her, because as soon her training was complete, she knew she was going back home to Wayhaven.

Her promotion to detective was a complete surprise to her. She had assumed Tina would get it because she had been there longer, or they would bring someone new in. Thea was only two years older than Douglas, and she had not been an officer for an incredibly long time. Part of her wondered if she had gotten it just because of her father, but at first, she was able to push this away, trusting that she got it on merit.

Then Unit Bravo came to town, and the doubts started to settle in more and more. What was she going to do against an angered supernatural, talk? Thea had poured herself into research about the supernatural world, but even with all of the knowledge she had acquired, she never felt like she belonged in the team. All of the others had their own specific skill sets that all added something, but Thea did not feel like she had anything to offer to the team.

Which is why she was surprised when Adam asked her to do the first sweep of the mission with him.

Felix had been against the idea of the two of them separating, and truthfully, she was as well, but she decided to go with Adam’s plan anyway, curious as to why he would ask her to go with him.

So now she was here, outside of one of the run-down houses in the woods in Wayhaven, freezing, following Adam through the dark. Thea was out of her normal sundress, with a sweater and jeans instead, but it did not do much against the chill of the night. Her small flashlight was the only light she had, and she supposed she had Adam’s night vison as well, trusting him to lead the way through the dark.

Thea tried to look at the house with the little light she had. It was half crumbling at this point, and the owners of the land no longer lived in Wayhaven, so here the house stood, in the middle of the woods, with chipping white paint and black shutters starting to look crooked from the passage of time. They had been notified of a potential hostage situation in the area, which is why the team decided not to send all of them at once, but Thea was not quite sure what she would offer over one of the others.

“Detective”.

“Yes?”, she called back, going to stand next to Adam, who had stopped just outside the front steps.

“Be as cautious as you normally are”, he said, “We don’t know what we are walking into”.

Thea gave one last look behind her, almost hoping to see a pair of amber eyes gleaming in the dark, “I will”.

Adam nodded, seeming satisfied with her response, and they strode off to the front door, quickening her step to keep up with him.

The front door was unlocked, which is struck her as odd, and even if the grip still felt foreign in her hands, she grabbed her gun, despite knowing it would not do much against the supernatural, and they made their way inside.

The owner of the house had left shortly after his wife died, and the house was left to sit as it was. Light blue curtains had become shredded over time, with the furniture full of scratches and water stains, the wooden floor rotting in some places. It was probably not safe to be walking through the house with these conditions, but there was not much else that they could do.

“I’m going to look down the hallway”, Adam said, “You take the main room”.

“Sounds good”, Thea said in response, and started looking around the room. In most parts of the room, everything was covered with a layer of dust, but she noticed the kitchen table did not. In fact, it looked like someone had put something on top of it recently, making almost a shape, but it was hard to tell what it was in the dark, and the electricity had been cut to the house ages ago.

She continued to look through the kitchen, opening the drawers to see if anything was there, but Thea did not find much more then normal kitchen appliances, and her chest fell.

I guess whoever was here took everything they had with them.

A loud crack of wood, followed by a scream that was definitely not Adam broke through her thoughts, and she raced back to where he had gone.

Thea found Adam outside of the very back backroom, a heavy lock on the ground, broken into two, the wood splinters from the door all over the ground, his knuckles bruised, but healing as she ran up.

“What’s going on?”, she asked him, turning her flashlight to face him in the dark, and when Adam did not answer, seemingly in disbelief, she looked inside the room with the now broken door.

Inside the dingy back bedroom, the room empty besides a single blanket and camping lantern, was a little girl. Though Thea was not quite sure, she looked like some sort of fae, with bright green hair that fell to her shoulders, her eyes completely blue, with a small shimmer of white ,her skin almost having an orange tint, and she was dressed in tattered hides that were similar to the ones that Felix was wearing in the memory from the carnival, and her heart tightened at the thought. She looked about four years old, but there was really no telling how old she was due to how supernaturals aged differently them humans. Thea looked back at Adam, who the first time in the time she knew him, seemed at a lost of what to do.

“Hey”, she said, smiling sweetly and kneeling down to her eye level. Thea them realized she might not know English, and while she knew several other languages, the native language of the echo world was not one of them, but she continued anyway, “My name is Thea, and this is Adam. We’re here to get you out of here.” She used Adam’s name, even though she knew that he would not likely appreciate that in order to create some level of familiarity with her.

“Out?”, she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, looking back at Adam with frightful eyes.

“Yes”, Thea said, “You never have to come back here. I promise”.

“Is there anyone else here?”, Adam asked.

The girl said nothing is response, seeming even more on edge after he spoke.

“I think whoever was here is long gone by now”, Thea said, turning back to Adam, “But we need to get her back to the others”.

Adam nodded, “I can. I still haven’t checked the master bedroom, and it seems to be best if you did.”

“I want to go with you”, the little girl’s voice cut in, moving closer to Thea and putting her hand on top of hers.

Adam shook his head, “Fine. I’m going to wait to process the rest of the house until the rest of the team gets here. One of us needs to stay behind in case they come back.

Thea nodded, and she got up from off the ground, and offered her hand to the girl, who took it, and she carefully led her out of the house together.

As they walked onto the porch of the house, it struck her just how dark it was, and how the small flashlight she did have was barely doing anything to light up the vast expanse of the forest.

“I’m scared”, she heard the girl mutter, who started hanging onto her leg, and Thea gently brushed her hand through her hair.

“It’s okay to be scared”, Thea said, “But I’m going to be here every step of the way”.

She picked her up, letting her head rest on her shoulder, as she trudged through the forest, trying hard to fight the urge to run, instead taking careful steps, keeping the flashlight steady, and thinking about seeing the team again after this moment of fear, especially one in particular.

Thea finally made it to the main road where the rest of Unit Bravo was waiting, the streetlights adding some warm amber glow to the surroundings, and let herself breathe as she saw the others.

“Thea!”, said a voice that never failed to make her smile. Felix stopped pacing, and almost ran up to her, and she could feel the girl move her head at the voice, “You’re back!”.

“I am”, she smiled, and both Nate and Mason came walking up to her as well.

“Where’s Adam?”, Nate asked.

“Still back at the house”, she replied, “He wanted me to get the rest of you before he finished processing”.

“Any sign of anyone else there?”, Felix asked, “And I’m guessing she’s the hostage we were told about?”

“Someone was”, Thea said, “But they are long gone by now. And as far as hostages go, she is probably one of them, but there is reason to believe there may be more than one.

“Why would they leave her behind?”, Nate said, looking worryingly at girl in her arms, and he gave her a smile.

“I don’t know”, Thea sighed, and she slowly set her down on the ground, her still holding onto her leg.

“We should get going”, Mason interrupted, and Nate nodded in response, then turned to Thea.

“Are you staying behind with her?”

“I am”, she said, looking back at the girl.

“Can I stay with Thea?”, Felix asked.

Mason snorted, and opened his mouth to say something, but Nate got there first.

“Yes. It’s better if none of us are out her alone”.

Felix beamed at that, and as Nate and Mason walked into the woods, he walked up to her, throwing an arm over her shoulders.

“Glad to see you’re okay”, he grinned, and even though it was said lightly, it was meant more serious than he had intended.

“The same to you”, she said, trying to fight down a blush on her cheeks.

He smiled at her again, a softer one this time, and then looked down at the girl, “What’s your name, kiddo?” He then paused, and then repeated his question in echolian, and Thea noticed that he frowned slightly as did so.

“Arethusa”, she whispered, and Felix smiled back at her, before turning to Thea.

“So, what happened?”

Thea went through it from the beginning, and told him the story, describing the house and finding Arethusa, and he stayed silent and listened to her, which surprised her a little, expecting him to say something, and it started to worry her about how quiet he was being.

“Do you think she’s from the echo world?”, Thea asked him, and he could feel him tense at the question.

“Probably”, he shrugged, not meeting her eyes, and Thea gently grabbed one of his hands, and at the gesture he grinned back at her, but it struck her as a masking one.

“Are you okay?”, she finally asked, and Felix gave a small laugh.

“Of course, I am”, he said, giving her a smirk, “When am I not?”

Thea could feel herself raising an eyebrow at the statement, which caused Felix to sigh.

“I’m okay, Thea”, he whispered, “I promise”.

She did not fully believe him, and not quite sure what to say, she ran her thumb over his wrist the same way that he had down the same for her countless times, and he gave her a genuine smile that never failed to fill butterflies in her stomach, letting herself get lost into his amber eyes.

“When are we leaving?”, Arethusa suddenly said, and it jolted Thea out of the moment, feeling awful for forgetting about her for a second.

“Whenever the rest of my team gets back”, she said, looking back into the expanse of the trees, as if expecting them to turn up then.

“And when will that be?”

“Hopefully not much longer”, Thea responded, not sure if she was saying that for Arethusa or for herself.

And to the luck of the three of them, it was not long afterwards that the rest of Unit Bravo came through the trees.

“Anything?”, Felix asked as they walked up.

Nate shook his head, “No. Someone was using the master bedroom as a base of operations of sorts, but they were careful enough not to leave anything behind.”

“What’s going to happen to the girl?”, Mason’s voice cut through, sharp, and Thea could feel Arethusa’s grip tighten around her leg at the sound of it.

“We’ll take her back to the Agency”, Nate said.

“She can ride in my car”, Thea brought up, “We’re all going back to the warehouse after all”.

“What’s going to happen to her?”, Felix asked.

“We’ll figure it out later”, Adam said, “Let’s get back first”.

Felix gave her hand a reluctant squeeze of goodbye before going to the others, and she heard a voice that she never expected to hear say her name.

“Thea, can I speak to you?”

She turned, to find it was indeed Adam, her name from him seeming foreign to her. He had never called her by her first name.

“Yes”, she said slowly.

“You did good work”, he stated simply, “It would have been hard to complete the mission without your help”

“Uh, thanks?”, she responded, never would have expected that to come from him.

He nodded, and then turned to go walk back to the rest of the team, as if that was all that needed, and as Thea thought about it, she decided that it really was.

Arethusa climbed into the backseat of her car, and Thea drove off, following the Agency car where the others were, and she allowed herself to smile, finally starting to feel at ease with the fact that maybe there was something she had to offer this team.

#the wayhaven chronicles #wayhaven chronicles #twc #detective thea holland #felix hauville #felix x detective #f hauville #31 days of wayhaven

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kazbrkker · 5 years ago

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Chapter 5: The Way It Was

Chapter summary: Fluff and angst. Price finally makes an appearance! First fight between Alexis and Alex and an interesting revelation...;) & glimpse of Alexis’ childhood. [2404 words]

Warnings: Shitty childhood (mention of alcohol & rough childhood.)

26 OCTOBER 2019, 2200 "Alexis" and "Alex", Codename Aces CIA agents with Urzik militia Al-Raab, Urzikstan.

"What was that?"

Alexis stormed forward, harshly jabbing her partner's back. They were taking the scenic walk back to the militia's base. While Farah and Hadir walked ahead of them, Alexis and Alex lagged behind to breath in the scenes of their victory.

"What was what?" Alex perplexed, cheekily plucking a few yellow chrysanthemums off the road and waving it in her face.

Alexis took the tiny flowers, a warm smile on display as she admired the adversity these flowers had to bloom in a place like this. Then it faltered upon realising it was an attempt to distract her. "You radioed Viper for me. That's against the rules."

Alex quickly brushed her off and walked into the militia's armory, Alexis hot on his trail. Standing in silence as they waited for the room to clear. "Since when are you one for following the rules? What, you wanted to personally say bye to him?"

What the hell, that took her by surprise. Where did that come from? "I only follow the rules to keep you out of trouble. Sorry for caring."

The hardened look in Alex's eye softened, "I was doing you a favour, come on! Viper was outrightly hitting on you over the comms. If Laswell wanted to bitch about it, you could get dragged into his mess." He shrugged and busied himself with removing his gear.

"Because minor flirting is worse than trashy comms etiquette?"

Alex stretched obnoxiously loud.

"No, fraternization is." That stung more than it should.

"That's a bit hypocritical, isn't it?" Spurts of anger gnawing at her rationale incited her to spit those words without hesitation —instantly regretting it. From the nostalgic look on Alex's face, he must have realised they were in a loop again. The last time they had this conversation, it didn't end well.

To put this delicately, Alexis and Alex were no strangers at fraternization. It happened one time after she returned from St. Petersburg, a drunken mistake that Alex agreed. Overtaken by choking wave of emotions —vulnerability, lust, the need to feel safe. It was the first time Alexis was desperate enough to ask for something, and Alex gave it to her. Like moths drawn to a flame, lonely agents like themselves, cut off from the rest of the world, take whatever comfort they can get.

They left that night without ever mentioning it again. Only the next drunken time (clearly not a good drinker) when she accidentally mentioned it —her mistake for assuming it meant... more.

Alex assured her it wasn't. It did some serious damage to their friendship for a while. After a few weeks, everything snapped back into the exact same, best friends and partners for life.

Now, leaning against a counter, she searched for any answers in his eyes. One thought crossed her mind —maybe he was jealous...? Impossible, she deserted the thought, Alex had never been the jealous type.

Plus, what happened was a one-time thing. It wouldn't, or rather, couldn't happen again. Alexis couldn't lose him too.

"Maybe." Alex murmured, refusing to meet her eyes, his jaw clenched tight while cleaning his rifle, the chiselled jawline highlighted from his profile. Wide-eyed, the female agent slowly cleared her throat, scattering to form a reply.

Alex's satellite phone rang, breaking the tense silence. Saved by the bell.

Speak of her and she shall appear —it was Laswell.

Alex hesitated, did Laswell really wanted to bitch about it? He was blindly shooting from the hip. The palpable tension dissolved, replaced by a flustered Alexis. His lips pursed in amusement, "Laswell wouldn't. I'm pretty sure she has a soft spot for you."

Alexis was smart, confident, witty, resourceful, strong —the strongest person he knew. Resilience built steadily like a rock, he could write lists after lists. Alex wasn't blind, who wouldn't have a soft spot for this woman.

"This is Bravo 6, Echo 3-1 and Saint, do you copy?" It was Price.

A nudge shook Alex out of his trance. Excited at the appearance of her mentor, Alexis snatched the phone from his grasps. It was a relief to know Price was on the mission too. Looks like this assignment was really bringing her old friends back together. "Price? Send traffic, Cap."

"Good job, hitting the airbase. Now that you have limited Barkov's air capability, we'll do our part."

"Glad we could help. What's the plan?" Alex replied to his field commander.

"We traced the masterminds of the Piccadilly attack to a townhouse in North London, we'll take care of it. You can put your feet up and rest."

"That is a command I can follow. Have fun, cap." Alexis spoke, ready to end the call.

"Not so fast, young lady. I was at the debrief, I managed to keep you out of trouble. If it was up to Norris, you'd be running laps like Viper. Don't get stupid, Alexis."

Alexis exhaled frustratedly. "Thanks, Cap." She replied in between scowls in response to the burning triumph look from Alex. His hands covering his mouth to muffle his wide smile. By taking his side, Price had inflated his ego unnecessarily bigger.

"But, you still have to run 5 miles for your insolence towards Laswell." Price delivered the ultimatum.

Her jaw slacked. "You're joking. Says Norris?"

"Colonel Norris." Price corrected with a sigh. "Says me. I told you one day that mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble. 5 miles. Alex?"

Alex exploded into laughters, no longer trying to suppress it. "Hah, roger that! I'll make sure of it. Out."

The call ended. Alexis had respect for authorities, to a certain extent. It wasn't impertinence, but rather her conditioned nature to bypass it. Coming from Task Force Black —a tier-one task force in the JSOC that didn't even answer to the President, falling into the chain of commands was never needed. Also might have to do with the fact that she started to detest the political bureaucracy over the years in the CIA.

John Price, Daniel Maddox —Alexis' commander in Task Force Black, and Samuel Forbes —her CIA handler were the only ones she would willingly abide. Kate Laswell was also close.

"Is this a bro code thing?" Alexis motioned in between them and the satellite phone, inspecting Alex as he raised his eyebrows in feigned innocence. "Price doing the dirty work on your behalf?"

"You heard the man, he said it was for your insolence."

"Wipe that smirk off your face." She mumbled, trying to use a dirty cloth to wipe his chin but he stopped her. If looks could kill... you know the rest.

"Let's go, babe. I'll time you."

"Aw. How kind." She retorted, thinking how badly she wanted to dig those blue eyes out from that arrogant face of his.

40 minutes later, a very sweaty and out-of-breath Alexis returned to the starting point. "5 miles... 5 god damn miles." She breathed, catching a towel and water bottle tossed her way. The entire 40 minutes was filled with killer glances towards Alex. They both knew the punishment wasn't for her insolence. Price wasn't the type to demand respect for other officers, the man could care less and so could Laswell.

This was an indirect way to lecture her, the brotherhood they had caused Price to take Alex's side. Judging from the glowing delight, this ought to satisfy him. Her punishment attracted a few audiences, including Hadir and Farah, who watched happily with her enemy on the roof.

"40 minutes on the dot. Impressive." Farah shouted from above. Hadir excitedly nodded, showing thumbs-ups.

Past the fourth mile, even her vision started to swirl. Blame the ever humid Urzikstan, it was insane she completed it without hurling. "I don't want to impress... I need a seat!" So she willingly fell on her butt and sat in the middle of the carpark.

They joined her shortly, grinning at her flushed cheeks and breathless words. Farah extended a hand and pulled the CIA agent up, "Steady now. Alex, why did you make her run so much!" She chided, elbowing him.

"Not me. It was Price."

"Keep lying, I'll harvest your toes." Farah gave a weird look at her insult. "All I have to do is look Price in the eye and he's a goner." Alex remained suspiciously silent, but yelped when Farah jabbed him in the gut. As revenge, Alexis smacked her sweaty towel against his tattooed arm, disgusted as he failed to swat it away.

Farah, who supported her to walk, didn't seem to care about her sweaty state. "Farah."

The commander hummed, bringing her inside the kitchen to sit. Hadir refilled her bottle.

"Would you like it if Alex and I trained your people? We can teach them some proper fighting tactics and medic courses. With your permission, of course."

Farah took a seat opposite her, mouth opening slightly before closing, as if she was unsure what to say. Hadir, witnessing this, said with a smile, "That would be extremely kind, Alexis."

A bright glint that could be interrupted as a tear reflected in the commander's eyes. Farah's hand squeezed hers tightly. Eyes crinkling upwards, Alexis knew that was her way of saying thanks.

"Great. We start tomorrow."

The two siblings soon left Alexis and Alex in the kitchen to unload some trucks that just entered the compound. He replaced Farah on the seat, "That is a great idea, Lexi."

Finally, some wind started blowing into the kitchen. She closed her eyes at the relieving night breeze. After today's mission, seeing how Farah's people fearlessly ran into the battlefield was reason enough to help them. Although a good trait, fearlessness can also be dangerous. "I want to help them. We were trained by the best in the world, it would be cruel not to share some of that knowledge."

They sat in silence, feeling the cool air while quenching their thirst. Putting their feet up, as Price ordered. Outside the kitchen, playful insults were thrown around by the pair of siblings. It was heartwarming, seeing genuine smiles and watching them be... normal. It was nice.

Growing up, Alexis wouldn't complain she had a bad childhood. Her dad was an honest man, a construction worker. For a man with such a harsh job, it translated into his personality. Her father wasn't affectionate, but he played a good father by putting a roof over their heads and food on the table.

Her life was normal, up till the very day her mother got into a fatal car accident, then everything changed. It was never said but Alexis knew her father blamed her for it. She only grew up to realise it was ridiculous. How could it have been her fault? But grief knew no sense.

Life waited for no one, years later, her father remarried. Lily was a great stepmother, not conforming to the stereotypical evil stepmom Alexis was so afraid of. Lily loved her, but not as much as her blood-borns.

Loved her, but not enough to stop the drunk shoutings, that much Alexis understood.

Alexis didn't remember much of her mother, only recognizing her face through photos. They looked nothing alike —her mother was blonde and had bright blue eyes, while Alexis inherited dark brown eyes and hair. For a man who held an imperative amount of self-loathing, imagine raising his reflection.

She envied the pair of siblings, even after everything, they still had each other. Seeing them together somehow felt lonelier. Emptier.

"I can hear the gears turning." Alex placed his chin on her shoulder, the action bringing her back down on Earth. She sniffled inconspicuously, pretending to use the damp towel to wipe her sweat. "What's wrong?"

"Why must something be wrong?"

"You're making that face."

Friends for five years, it would be foolish to assume something could escape his eyes. Goosebumps raised over her arms, feeling the stubble on his chin tickling her skin. She turned to examine the man who had been through everything with her. Hell and back, literally.

Alexis didn't know how she could ever live without him.

"Just reminiscing." She replied, a distant look in her eyes while she continued smiling at the siblings' bickering. Alex followed her gaze, knowing.

"The past is the past, Alexa–" Alex almost uttered her birth name but stopped in the nick of time. "Sorry, it slipped." His voice was muffled by Alexis' hand.

"You get my point. What matters is the now, and now you have me."

"I'll always have you." She recited, hands intertwined.

The usual smirk on Alex's face was replaced with a heartfelt smile, their gaze connected meaningfully. "And I, you." He laid a gentle kiss on the top of her hand.

Alexis and Alex stayed like that for a few more minutes, her head resting on his shoulder. Suddenly, a sound pierced through the peace —it came from Alex's stomach. Alexis laughed before tossing him her rations pack.

"Uh-huh. No. You two are not eating that." Farah walked in to snatch the rations away. Their mouths fell open, watching their favourite ration pack out of their reach.

"Hey! That was shrimp fried rice, proper good stuff!"

"Closest to gourmet." Alex backed her up. It was the tastiest ration pack. Alexis even secretly raided the base's stockpile to neat pick the most decent ones —there goes her efforts.

Farah tossed the unopened pack to Hadir, who caught it with ease and wiggled it higher when Alexis tried to reach for it. "You cannot win this war with... that." Hadir inspected it, face twisted with distasteful when he opened it, revealing an unappealing mash of rice compressed into a box.

Farah tugged on her wrist, already pulling her down the stairs. "If you don't throw it away, I will tell Captain Price about your horrible English accent.

Alexis groaned, "If this war wouldn't kill me, Price would."

"Better yet, he'll make you run the miles for real."

Her lips parted with a gasp, pointing accusingly as Farah continued to drag her down the stairs. "So you admit it was you!"

"Come." Hadir pulled away the agent who tried to jump Alex with a punch.

"We will show you the real gourmet."

taglist: @flyboidameron

a/n: it was my birthday yesterday so i decided we need this fluff.... it's so 🥰. masterlist here. want to be tagged? let me know!

#call of duty x oc #call of duty x reader #echo 3-1 #alex cod #alex modern warfare #john price #kyle garrick #kate laswell #farah karim #hadir karim #simon ghost riley #future simon riley x oc #oc: alexandra prince #ysr writes: kl #killer instinct #modern warfare #tw: read warnings carefully #fanfiction #call of duty modern warfare

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crazychickmia · 5 years ago

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The Day Sadeas Outsmarted Himself

On my latest re-read of The Stormlight Archive I was struck by the poetic beauty of Sadeas' downfall. Apologies in advance, because this is going to be long!

Our first ever introduction to Adolin (Book 1, Chapter 12) *instantly* makes note of just how much Adolin dislikes Sadeas.

We are also presented with Renarin attempting to be a voice of reason - with more examples

"We should move back,” Renarin said. “We are of rank enough to be here,” Adolin said. “I don’t like how you get when you’re around Sadeas.” We have to keep an eye on the Man, Renarin, Adolin thought. He knows Father is weakening. He’ll try to strike.

But wait, there’s more!

“Adolin...” Renarin said warningly. Adolin looked to the side. He’d held out his hand, as if to summon his blade. He picked up his reins with his hand instead. Storming man, he thought. Leave my father alone.

We see MULTIPLE examples - these are just the earliest ones - that when it comes to Sadeas, Adolin looses all sense and would definitely do something very stupid if it wasn’t for other people talking sense into him. From Dalinar’s point of view...

Now HERE is something I find interesting. Sadeas acknowledges that Adolin is a firebrand, and that Dalinar was once impetuous just like him (keeping in mind that as we read this book for the first time, we really don’t understand just how severely Dalinar earned his title of Blackthorn).

Now let’s jump to a chapter from Sadeas’ point of view:

This was the youth who had bragged about his skill so often? He was good, of course, but not nearly that good. Not as good as Sadeas had himself seen when the boy had been on the battlefield fighting the... He was faking. Sadeas found himself grinning. “Now that’s almost clever,” he said softly. “What?” Ialai asked. “Adolin is fighting beneath his capacity,”

Sadeas sees through the ruse. Ialai narrowed her eyes, watching the fight. “Are you sure? Couldn’t he just be having an off day?” “I’m sure,” Sadeas said.

Adolin Kholin was cleverer than Sadeas had given him credit for.

Better at dueling as well. It took skill to win a bout - but it took true mastery to win while making it look the whole time that you were behind. As the fight progressed, the crowd got intoit, and Adolin made it a close contest. Sadeas doubted many others would see what he did.

Sadeas found himself quite impressed. There might be a future for this boy, he thought. More so than his father, at least.

So here we have smarty-pants Sadeas clearly acknowledging that Adolin is talented and clever.

Sadeas tapped his finger against the side of his seat. “What was it you said about duelists? That they’re brash? Hotheaded?” “Yes. And?” “Adolin is both of those things and more,” Sadeas said softly, considering. “He can be goaded, pushed around, brought to anger. He has passion like his father, but he controls it less securely.’ Can I get him right up to the cliff’s edge, Sadeas thought, then shove him off?

“I want to see how this develops.” “That sounds dangerous,” Ialai said. “That boy is a weapon, Torol.” “True,” Sadeas said, standing. “But you are rarely cut by a weapon if you are the one holding it’s hilt.”

Sadeas had a very high opinion of his ability to manipulate Adolin here. “He has passion like his father, but he controls it less securely”....dude, you knew the Blackthorn during the height of his Blackthorn-ness. Does pushing someone who has passion like Dalinar but controls it less securely REALLY sound like a good idea to you? Seriously? Sadeas man, I thought you were supposed to be smart. Okay the next quotes in their entirety would add quite a bit to this already wordy post so I’m going to cut some paragraphs out.

Total Sadeas, highprince, Shardbearer, and the very man Adolin had been thinking of - the single person he hated most in the world.

Adolin pushed past Sadeas, not trusting himself to speak so much as a single word to this eel of a man.

And

“I’ll have your throat in my hands, Sadeas,” Adolin hissed “I’ll squeeze and squeeze, then I’ll sink my dagger into your gut and twist. A quick death is too good for you.” “Tsk,” Sadeas said, smiling. “Careful. It’s a full room. What if someone heard you threatening a highprince?’

Adolin turned in a quick motion, reversing out of Sadeas’s grip. His next moves were by instinct, his fingers balling, stepping in preparation to plant a fist in that smiling, self satisfied face. A hand fell on Adolin’s shoulder, causing him to hesitate. “I don’t think that would be wise, Brightlord.”

If Amaram, the bastard, hadn’t stepped in right then, Adolin would have punched Sadeas in the face in public.

We have now seen, MULTIPLE times, that Adolin would be filling to physically fight Sadeas - regardless of disastrously stupid that move would be legally/politically - and the ONLY reason he hasn’t is because other people have stepped in to make him back down.

Then we have The Massive Duel, where Sadeas only sneaks out the noose due to Kaladin’s severe faux pas.

A drop of sweat smacked the surface [of his table]. He’d kept himself from trembling all the way back to the safety of his warcamp - he’d actually managed to past on a smile.

Four Shardbearers. How? Even allowing for the help of that slave, it was now obvious that Adolin was at last growing into the man his father had been. That terrified Sadeas, because the man Dalinar had once been - the Blackthorn - had been a large part of what had conquered this kingdom.

So to recap:

Sadeas knows Adolin is cleverer than many others assume him.

Sadeas knows Adolin is a VERY dangerous fighter.

Sadeas knows Adolin is EXTREMELY brash and hot headed.

And despite knowing ALL of that...clever, smart Sadeas still thinks it’s a good idea to taunt him while they are alone. (Is their meeting in the corridors of Urithiru the first time the two of them have been completely alone in the series? Hmm that is something I would have to to check on my next re-read.)

And so:

Sadeas has all the facts. Ialai voiced her concerns.

But Sadeas was over-confident. He obviously didn’t think that Adolin, son of the Blackthorn, would dare touch him, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Yes, Adolin, you just murdered a highprice. But as a wise woman later said:

“Well!” Said Palona, hands on her hips as she regarded Sadeas’s corpse. “I guess that’s one problem solved!”

Everyone in the room turned towards her.

“What?” she said. “Don’t tell me you weren’t all thinking it.”

Bravo Adolin, bravo.

#adolin kholin #torol sadeas #the stormlight archive #cosmere #brandon sanderson #son of the blackthorn

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afurrybutthememekind · 5 years ago

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Vox ‘Voxxy’ King

I think Vox is probably my favorite to write. A lot of internal dialogue since they almost never talk and most of the time people think they aren’t even paying attention. They’ve spent most of their life apathetic to everything and everyone around them and now both Nate and Adam make them feel and it disgusts them.

I think my favorite part of Vox is that ‘vox’ is the Latin word meaning ‘voice’ and they’re almost always mute. Nate knows Latin so I hope he appreciates that.

Vox-intimidating, stoic, silent, observant

First meeting:

I tense slightly when I hear someone walking up behind me. Just relax. I finish fixing the coffee machine, listening for any more movement from the person behind me.

“You always were good with things like that.” My mother’s voice is soft behind me, accompanied by her hand on my shoulder.

I set the coffee machine to brew a new pot then turn my head to blink at her.

“I need to talk to you about this case you’re working on. It’s bigger than you think.”

I nod my head towards my office and follow after Rebecca. Inside, I gesture to one of the chairs before lowering myself into my own behind my desk.

“The man you’re looking for has killed before. In many places.” She sits across from me and folds her hands in her lap.

I sigh and frown at the crime scene photos.

“We’ve been tracking him for some time now.” Rebecca reaches out to rest her hand on mine, making my brows draw together in confusion. “I have reason to believe he will be staying in Wayhaven for some time. This is our last chance to catch him.” She squeezes my hand and my frown deepens. “I’m here to offer you something the mayor is very keen for you to utilize.”

I don’t have time for this. “Please, just get to the point.” My voice is quiet enough that I’m not sure she even heard me.

Rebecca almost seems shocked when I speak but quickly schools her features and clears her throat. “The team of agents I command.”

I sigh and squeeze my eyes shut. I let out an annoyed huff before jerking my head in something resembling a nod. Team? I don’t do teams. “Fine.”

“I know you prefer to work alone but I’m glad you’re willing to work with them.” She releases my hand and crosses to the door to call out to someone.

I lean back in my chair, forcing a relaxed posture as four men march into my office. This is going to suck. I nod in acknowledgement at the men but don't make a move to greet them.

“Detective Vox King, meet Unit Bravo.” Rebecca turns to me and hisses. “Stand up and have some manners.”

Why? It’s a waste of time. I huff softly but push to my feet. I don’t bother hiding the small, satisfied grin from pulling at my lips when I do and I earn a few shocked expressions. Always a pleasure to be the tallest in the room.

The tallest of the group steps forward and offers his hand. “Agent Nathaniel Sewell, though I prefer Nate.” His friendly smile almost makes me smile in return but I quickly bite down on it.

I stare blankly at his hand with a cocked head. Why would I want to return his smile? Strange. He’s pleasant to look at but-

“Vox, you know what a handshake is.”

I blink out of my thoughts at my mother’s voice and nod. When I grab his hand I have to bite down on the desire to smile again. This is weird.

When Nate steps back into the group I find myself trailing his movements with my eyes. I don’t look away from him until another man steps forward.

“Felix.” He steps up next to me, at least a foot shorter than me and grins. “Felix Hauville.”

I take his offered hand. I cock my head and blink slowly at him as he brings my hand to his lips. You’re trying too hard.

“Nothing?” Felix pouts before his grin returns. “You’ll react eventually.”

Don’t count on it. I turn to the next man. We stare at each other in a tense silence before my mother sighs.

“This is Specialist Agent Mason.”

Quiet. I like him. I give him a small nod and move on to the final member of Unit Bravo. His pale green eyes meet mine and I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. My mouth parts slightly in a quiet huff and I almost step backwards.

“This is Commanding Agent Adam du Mortain. The leader of Unit Bravo.”

“I look forward to working with you,” Adam lies through his teeth and offers his hand.

I don’t hesitate to take it. “Likewise.” I haven’t looked away from his gaze, biting down on my cheek hard enough to draw blood. What’s with the sudden desire to smile? I don’t like either of them.

Rebecca is frowning at me in confusion before she schools her features and rests a hand on my shoulder once again. “Well now that introductions have been made I will leave you to work on the case.” She casts a pointed look at her team before smiling at me. I let her pull me into a hug and pat my back before leaving, still not looking away from Adam as she does.

Reveal:

My eyes immediately fall on Adam before I can stop them. He’s watching me with a concerned frown on his face. When I do look away I find myself looking at Nate, whose concern is far more evident. Are they worried about how I’ll take the news or how I’ll think of them now that I know?

“Nothing to say?” Felix grins. “Is it fear or excitement that’s got your tongue?”

I frown and cock my head. It’s indifference. “Neither.”

“So you just what? Don’t care?” Felix pouts. “I was hoping we’d finally get some sort of reaction out of you. Something like ‘oh my god vampires?!�� but you’re no fun.”

I certainly hope you don’t ever get a reaction out of me. I turn my head and tut at the wall.

“They don’t react to much, never have.” Rebecca sits beside me and rests her hand on mine. “You’re okay?”

I huff in annoyance and roll my eyes at her. Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?

She chuckles. “So you’re ready to see the rest?”

If we must. I nod and gesture for her to lead the way, following as she steps out into the hallway.

#The Wayhaven Chronicles #twc detective #twc fanfic #detective vox king #adam du mortain #nate sewell #felix hauville #mason #rebecca

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rebellingstagnationblog · 5 years ago

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2019 Geronimo Christmas Fics

That’s right, we’re doing it again! 25 new Geronimo fics published December 1-25.

The title? “That’s Christmas to Me”

The playlist? All Pentatonix songs

The theme? Well, why don’t you see for yourself? Here’s a first look at day 1

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

youtube

[[MORE]]

This world was dark, even for her tastes.

Physically, that was.

She could not yet speak for the metaphorical; she had only just arrived, after all, and rumors were nothing to base one’s perceptions on.

Searchlights were the primary source of light, their long beams stretching up into the dark sky, making a long sweep from one end of the metropolis to the other. If there was a moon or stars, she couldn’t tell. The searchlights were too bright to allow anything in the vast vacuum of space to shine down onto the world below.

Her boots crunched on the newly fallen snow, a satisfying snap snap snap as she made her way down the street. There was no question as to the direction she was headed. The building in the center of town was the one to which the searchlights were fixed, giving off its position with all the finesse of a disco ball.

Darkwarrior Duck might be the most fearsome of all the Darkwings in the multiverse, but he still had the same ego. The same lack of sense when it came to anything involving stealth or sophistication.

At least there was order here. Her simmering irritation was soothed at seeing how precisely the citizens moved about. Crossed the street at crosswalks. Cars merged with clear signals for at least 300 feet before changing lanes. Everyone stuck to their side of the sidewalk, eyes forward without any sort of technology out to distract them.

It was because of this — this enforcement of rules and regulations — that she was walking down this sidewalk to begin with.

She crossed the street with a few citizens and continued marching toward the building that set her teeth on edge. On her own. No one else was heading anywhere close to this part of town.

Dark ebony robots, the shapes of which resembled Darkwarrior’s head with claws extending out below their beaks hovered before her. What a terrible design. Their only option for movement was strictly airborn since they had no legs. And it seemed rather arrogant to shape something after one's own features.

Then again.

Look at their designer.

“Identification, please,” came the modulated voice. Weak and wavering compared to those in her own world.

She stared unblinkingly at the robot. “Ana Di Lengo.”

The robot hovered, bobbing up and down gently, completely silent for a few moments. “Error. Death records exist for one Ana Di Lengo. Identification, please.”

She sent the bot — and whoever was watching through it's cameras — a thin smile. “Death records exist for the Ana in this universe perhaps. I, however, am not from here.”

The robot fell into silence again. And moved aside as the door behind it swung open.

Complete blackness yawned before her, the building imposing and endless. She stepped through without a moments hesitation.

It was all for show, this grandiose structure. The security out front meant to intimidate the visitor and give them some idea of who they were about to deal with.

But Ana was not intimidated.

The blackness inside was not so complete that she couldn't see where she was going. The lobby was empty, a colossal curved staircase curling upwards that took her to the second level. Into a rounded antechamber, which also was empty.

The walls were fitted with large panels of glass, windows revealing the sprawling city around them. Pale snow blanketed the streets and buildings, dulling the lights that tried their best to illuminate the darkness. In the center of this rounded chamber was a circular platform, along one side of which were stacked rows of computer monitors like bricks in the facade of a building. They showed the city from different angles, some stationary shots evidently from fixed cameras and others moving, likely from robots on patrol, sending back their feed.

Within this half-circle of monitors sat one solitary chair. Padded. With low arms and a wide back. Almost wide enough to obscure the figure that was sitting in it. Almost.

The room was not so empty after all.

The chair was facing away from her. But she didn't need to see his face to know who was lying in wait.

“You're very far from home,” came a purr out of the darkness.

Ana came to stand at the edge of the platform, hands tucked behind her back and head held high. “Turn around and face me, Drake. Where are your manners?”

The figure stiffened either at her tone or at the casual name she called him. Whichever the reason, Ana felt her beak twist into a triumphant smirk.

She allowed it to fall as the chair swiveled around. No need to show off.

Within the plush upholstery sat a familiar figure. Wearing the ridiculous purple outfit with a large brimmed fedora in a matching shade. He had foregone the button down suit and substituted it with something akin to a jumpsuit that was belted at the hips. Military grade boots — steel toed by the looks of them — would have blended into the darkness if they hadn't been polished to a shine. The infantile cape was secured around his shoulders, tucked underneath sizable spiked shoulder armor, making him all the more imposing and broad.

There was still a mask secured around his face, but his eyes glowed red. It was into these that Ana stared, unabashed and unafraid.

As Darkwarrior Duck sized her up.

She in her own black uniform. Much crisper and more impressive than his spiked armor. Drake was many things; subtle was not one of them, no matter the universe.

“Are we going to discuss why you're here? Or is this a staring contest?” he asked, his voice carefully controlled and giving away nothing. She was almost impressed. Almost.

“Don’t joke with me, boy,” Ana snapped. “You can guess why I'm here, surely.”

Darkwarrior leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled in his militaristic gloves. “It must be something big if the great Ana Di Lengo traveled all the way from the Posiverse to visit me.”

“Oh, yes, bravo,” Ana intoned, glaring at Darkwarrior down her beak. “Come, come, Drake. If we are to be allies, I must be able to trust that you can put two and two together on your own.”

He frowned. “My name is Darkwarrior.”

Ana narrowed her eyes a fraction. “Not to me.”

Darkwarrior eyed her.

She let the silence linger.

Silence is a funny thing. Everyone is quick to break it. It makes people uncomfortable, you see. The lack of noise makes them believe they need to be filling the void with something. If you stay quiet long enough, your counterpart will inevitably start talking.

“Allies, you and I?” Darkwarrior asked. “Against whom?”

Case in point.

Silence: a leader’s most effective tool.

“Against the monstrosity that is Gosalyn Mallard Prime.” Saying the name was like a bad taste on her tongue. Gosalyn Mallard had come into Ana’s world to be put on trial and punished for her rash actions of traveling around the multiverse. She had not only escaped her lifelong sentence, but had incentivized the people of Ana’s world — the Posiverse — to uprise and fight against the rules that had been put in place to protect them. Even Ana’s second in command, her own son, had gone against her and joined ranks with the Gosalyn from their own world.

Gosalyn Mallard Prime had ruined everything.

And Ana would show that girl the justice that was in the wake of such haphazard and reckless rule breaking.

Ana took a breath.

Patience.

All in good time.

Darkwarrior raised an eyebrow, still peering over his steepled fingers. “She has a big support system. To go against her is to go against them all.”

“Hence why I am here.”

Smirking, Darkwarrior leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You need me.”

“And your robots. When going up against repeat rule breakers, it's best to come prepared with the full force of the law.”

Darkwarrior Duck was grinning fully now, a cunning curl of his beak.

Another voice, however, came from the darkness. A slighter sound, weaker. “We can offer our full forces.”

Ana glanced to where the voice had come from and felt her fingers twitch at the sight, ready to grab a weapon. But she stayed her hand.

It was another Gosalyn. This one brown haired and softer. More reserved. She seemed to have some semblance of rules and etiquette, her hands hanging at her sides and her expression one of respect as she surveyed Ana with her green eyes.

Ana pushed aside her confusion — the entire point of the Darkwarrior universe was that a Gosalyn didn’t exist, after all, so how one could be here was mind numbing — and inclined her head. “Together, I am confident that we can accomplish our goal.”

“No violence,” this brown-haired Gosalyn said as she stepped fully out of the shadows and stood beside Darkwarrior.

Ana studied them together, the dark uncompromising version of her son and this girl who shouldn’t exist. Really, neither of them should exist. This universe was a blight on an otherwise perfect system.

But, desperate times.

Ana bowed her head. “No violence,” she echoed.

The brown haired Gosalyn nodded. “Then we will help you bring order to the Prime Universe.”

Ana sent a thin smile to the girl. “Might I ask who you are?”

“Christine.”

Still a Gosalyn, but going by a different name. Interesting. Ana would need to study her records to find out where this one had come from, for it surely wasn’t here. Could not be here.

“You have a bright future ahead of you, my dear.” Ana looked between the two. “Shall we settle on a date?”

Darkwarrior finally stood, gesturing off to the side. “We can use my consulting room.”

“There’s less potential of being overheard in there,” Christine offered, a smile gracing her beak as she led the way.

Ana nodded once in agreement before following the impossible girl.

P.S. Since I’m not taking requests for stories/songs this year for the main story, I will happily take holiday related requests from people if they’re interested. DM me so we can talk more!

#darkwing duck #fanfiction #geronimo series #25 days of christmas

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thefifthclown · 5 years ago

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Part 1, Chapter 1-Mother Becomes President; Scene 6

Fifth, Pierrot, pages 39-49

Lemy had been in good spirits that day.

His mother, who was always so busy, had her plans free that night. Thanks to that, she’d agreed to go with Lemy to see the circus. The fact that the circus was being held that night was also fortunate.

The building for “Milanais Theater”, completed after two years of work, looked radiant.

Lemy sat with his mother on the first floor seats of this opera house that had been erected along the Orgo river to the west of Milanais square.

The light of an enormous chandelier that hung from the ceiling illuminated the stage.

“Thank goodness we were able to get first floor seats,” Lemy said to Julia.

He’d figured that if they had been on the second floor seats or higher, the stage would be obstructed by the support pillars, making it harder to see. Them getting such good seats was due to Julia’s connections, already being a senator at the time; however Lemy had no way of knowing that.

The circus’ scheduled performance time had already passed, but there was still no one on the stage.

It seemed the curtain raising was late due to some trouble, and there came to be booing coming from the audience.

Eventually, some man who looked to be the manager timidly appeared on stage. He explained to the crowd, an apologetic expression on his face, “Erm…We had planned for the circus to perform, but it seems they have met some unexpected difficulties in their preparations...So instead, please enjoy some singing by a diva until the circus begins as an opening performance--"

Rather than coming to a halt, the booing got progressively louder and louder. The audience here had come to see a circus. They didn’t want to hear any singing.

And in the place of the manager, who left the stage as though fleeing from it, a lone girl walked on.

She had blonde hair and blue eyes. She looked around the same age as Lemy.

“Wha…!” Julia raised her voice in surprise, and then turned to Lemy next to her. “Doesn’t that girl look like you, Lemy?”

“You think so?”

“Yes, the more I look you’re the spitting image—”

And there Julia’s face grew grave, and she fell silent.

A girl who looked like Lemy, who’d been an orphan—she’d likely realized there what that indicated.

To put it simply, there was a chance that she was Lemy’s long-lost twin.

At the time, that didn’t occur to Lemy. The only thing he was thinking then was that he was sorry for this girl, having to sing in these kinds of conditions.

Julia could guess that from seeing her son’s expression, and once more faced forward.

“…Well, let’s listen to her song for now. Until the circus starts.”

The girl on the stage bowed once, and then, not paying any mind to the continuous booing, began to sing.

It was an acapella, a vocal solo without any musical accompaniment.

As she started to sing, little by little the booing stopped.

And then it faded off entirely.

The only sound that carried in the air was the girl’s singing voice.

“What a strong and pretty voice. Your mother certainly likes this girl’s song. What about you, Lemy?” Julia quietly murmured, looking towards him.

Lemy’s eyes were open wide.

“…Rin,” was the only thing Lemy muttered.

“Hm?”

“—I’m certain of it, Mom. That’s…that has to be Rin’s voice! How—”

Lemy had started to raise his voice, and so the audience members around them turned to glare at him. Julia flusteredly tried to keep him from talking.

“Calm down, Lemy. What in heavens is the matter? This ‘Rin’—”

“My friend from the orphanage. I was always listening to her sing. I know I’m right. That has to be Rin…but her face is completely different.”

“Her face is different?”

Julia inclined her head in confusion.

“But I know that’s Rin’s voice! Please believe me, Mom—"

“I know, I know, so please keep your voice down. …You’re absolutely sure?”

“Yeah, I swear to god.”

“…I see. Your mother doesn’t care much for gods, but I do care for you, Lemy. So I will believe you.”

So saying, Julia calmed Lemy down.

And then she started to mutter to herself while watching the stage once more.

“That’s one of the orphanage children…but her face is different from what Lemy remembers…”

It sounded like she was thinking about something.

Finally, the corners of her mouth lifted. She seemed to be smiling.

“It couldn’t be…No, there’s no way…But I see…’Seventh Magician’…acting without permission again.”

Right as she muttered that to herself, the girl on the stage finished singing.

Immediately afterwards, cheers welled up from the audience seats.

“Bravo! Stupendous!”

“It’s the birthday of a new tradition!”

“Encore! Encore!”

Everyone in the audience was praising her. There was no longer anyone there complaining.

In response to the calls for encore, she began to sing a second song.

--Ultimately, the circus performance ended midway through. The reason being that one of the performers died from an unforeseen accident.

But there were no audience members who were dissatisfied regarding that. Everyone was satisfied with having witnessed the debut of a prodigy diva.

After that, she began to walk the road to being the most famous diva in Lucifenia…Or rather, the whole continent.

After the performance had ended and they left Milanais Theater, Julia abruptly said to Lemy, “Lemy, can you head home by yourself from here? Your mother has to go somewhere for a little bit.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine…What’s come up?”

“You’re concerned about that girl, aren’t you? You said she was your friend, I recall…So your mother is going to look into it a little.”

“Can you do that?” Lemy’s face suddenly lit up.

“Yes, just leave it to me. I’ll return by tomorrow morning, so just go home and get some rest—No detours, okay?”

“Got it. Well then…take care, Mom.”

Parting from his mother, Lemy began to walk back to their house.

He knew the way home from Milanais Theater. Lemy followed his mother’s direction and headed straight there.

At the outset, the street was filled with travelers on their way home from the show. But as he got closer to home, they gradually became fewer and fewer. And by the time he could see the lights of his house in the distance, there was no one about but Lemy.

“Meow”

He could hear a cat meowing from a side alley.

“Hm? Irina?”

Thinking it was the red cat that his mother owned, Lemy headed in the direction of the meowing.

--If he really thought about it, there was no way it was. That red cat had been following around behind his mother all day today. It had been on her lap during the show.

And when Lemy had parted from Julia, that cat had been riding on her shoulder.

“--!”

Just as he’d started to turn around, Lemy’s left arm was strongly seized by someone, and then he was dragged back into the back alley.

“Heh heh heh. I’ve got a big catch!” A large, bearded man laughed while gripping Lemy’s arm.

“You’ve done it, Big Bro Yarera III! This brat’s the son of Senator Abelard. It’ll be a cinch to get a high ransom if we carry him off,” a small, thin man next to him laughed similarly.

“Yeah. Lately those ‘Pere Noel’ jerks have been throwing their weight around so much we’ve been out of our livelihood, but finally looks like we’re gonna get some good liquor for a change—Come on kid, this way.”

The large man called Yarera III yanked on Lemy’s arm further, trying to pull him away somewhere.

“L-let me go!”

At the time Lemy had fiercely struggled, trying to throw the man off and escape, but as Yarera III’s arm strength far outclassed his he was not successful.

“Come quietly. I don’t wanna have to be needlessly violent with ya.”

The man grabbed Lemy’s right arm as well, pulling him closer.

“Son of a bitch—you talk big for someone whose name sounds like a bit character!”

It seemed that provocation infuriated the man.

“…You bastard, how dare you fucking insult the name I inherited from my grandfather!”

Yarera III released his right hand gripping Lemy and then punched his cheek with a strong blow.

“Ugh…”

The inside of his mouth was cut.

Blood flowed from a gap in his lips, and fell in drops to the ground.

“Don’t do that, Big Bro. Ya can’t hurt our hostage.”

“I know. Well, at least it’s made him quiet down a bit.”

Lemy desperately kept himself from bursting into tears.

As if he’d cry. As if he’d be let himself brought to tears by these guys.

He kept that thought in mind.

--My my, looks like you’re in a pretty bad predicament.

It was Ney’s voice. Despite what was happening to Lemy right then, her voice had no hint of tension in it.

Would you like me to save you?

“…What can you do? You’re just a voice.”

He’d intended it as a rebuke towards Ney, but Yarera III apparently thought that he was being slighted again.

“Looks like I need to teach ya another lesson.”

He raised his fist again, and on reflex Lemy shut his eyes and flinched.

“—Hey, let go of the kid.”

A voice came out from further inside the back alley. It was a young man’s voice.

“Tch…We got another rat here.”

Yarera III and his accomplice turned around.

Lemy looked in that direction with them.

--The man was wearing a very peculiar outfit.

His entire face was covered in pure white makeup, save for his nose which was bright red. He was wearing a cap with two points on it, and the clothes he had on were gaudy with a great deal of fluttery bits attached.

“What’s this? What’s a pierrot doing in a place like this…”

Yarera III took a step back, making a bewildered expression.

Pierrot…A clown. Yes, Lemy had wanted to see one at the circus today.

An amusing street performer that engaged in juggling and acrobatics. He had only seen them in picture books, but certainly all the ones in the books were dressed like that.

“You get lost on your way from the circus? Scram. If not…I, the great Zusco Jr, will cut up your stupid face!”

The thin man, Yarera’s accomplice, pulled a knife from his pocket and drew closer to the pierrot.

But—

It was one moment. No sooner had the Pierrot swiftly grabbed Zusco Jr.’s arm than he had agilely thrown his foe’s body to the ground.

“Eeek~”

Taking a blow to the head, Zusco Jr. gave a strange shout, and then lost consciousness.

“You—you bastard! You ain’t just a pierrot are ya!?”

Still holding onto Lemy, Yarera III took another step backward. The pierrot took the knife from Zusco Jr. and then pointed the tip at Yarera III threateningly.

“I’m too busy for this. I’ll say it once more. Let the kid go. I don’t wanna waste any more time on you,” the pierrot said, slowly advancing on them.

“That pierrot outfit…Your skill...I see! You’re ‘Fifth, Pierrot’! Dammit! So those ‘Pere Noel’ bastards are finally comin’ after Yarera III, huh!?”

“…I have no idea what you’re talking about—but for the last time. Let the kid go. If not—"

“Shit! I won’t forget this!”

Yarera III threw Lemy at the pierrot as hard as he could. And then, as fast as he could, he picked up the unconscious Zusco Jr. and then sprinted away.

Just as Lemy was pitching forward after being thrown, he was being held up by the pierrot’s grip.

“Th-thank you…mister…Pierrot…sir.”

“You seem injured.”

“Yeah. But it’s not a big deal. Just my mouth got cut.”

“Even so, you should get that looked at. Is your home nearby?”

“It’s right over there.” Lemy turned around and pointed to his home. “Pheobe…our servant is home, so I’ll have her take care of me. If you want, you can come with me, Mister Pierrot—”

When Lemy turned around again, he saw that the pierrot was already gone.

<<prev------directory------next>>

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kikizoshi · 5 years ago

Note

may i request a fyogol drabble or short fic about fyodors birthday and how he doesn't think its important but nikolai uses it as an excuse to show him a silly magic trick and suddenly their day isn't going so badly anymore

Yes, of course! Thanks for the ask (and on Fyodor’s birthday, too; this really is such a treat)! I took a few liberties with the story, as you’ll see, because I thought it fit with their theme a bit better, but I tried to include everything you asked for. And, yeah, I hope you enjoy it! It was great having an outside reason to write, so thank you very much!

The ticking and tocking clock mocks Gogol as he swings his legs, laying half off a new-smelling bed and utterly bored out of his mind. ‘Tick’ reminds him that there’s nothing to do. ‘Tock’ reminds him that he could make something to do. ‘Tick’ argues that he can’t do something out of the ordinary for his character designation of Secretary. 'Tock’ disagrees, because who’s going to be looking at Secretary, anyway? Gogol vaguely remembers the story of an angel and demon on one’s shoulder and groans out loud at the overused cliche.

He looks over to the door and sighs. He doesn’t mind any of the other scenery around the room–he’d long since tired of the dull white walls and clean kitchen. The worn, polished picture frames and the new IKEA desk mean nothing if their owner doesn’t care for their contents. No, the only things of mild value remain tucked away in Gogol’s cloak, and so nothing catches his eye. It’s just the door that’s insufferable. A sort of freedom taunts him this time in the form of being so very close, and it’s maddening. Strangely, both Tick and Tock agree with him on that.

Gogol sighs harder–as though that will relieve him of his tantalizing thoughts–and scratches at his black wig. He looks at the tiny slit of a gap between the door and the doorframe and imagines himself becoming as thin as paper (or maybe thinner?), slipping through that taunting crevice. He can practically feel it–the smooth, slightly rough but oh so satisfying slide against the door and doorframe until he’s out and the cool, near-winter air whisks him up, up and away from this melancholic, drab, caged act.

The clock forgets Gogol’s even there, arguing with itself louder, and that damned itch won’t go away, so Gogol scratches more–only serving to irritate the skin, itching it further–stills his legs, and the free energy coils up in his gut, screaming at him to move. He jolts up and throws the wig across the pristine floor, dragging his nails along his scalp irritably. God, how do people spend their every day like this?!

It’s terrible, yes, simply awful, so why should Gogol stay in their hell? No, he has better things to do. It’s a very important day, after all! A grin stretches his face at that, the thought instantly lightening his mood. He’d almost forgotten the speciality of this day, but how could he? When his dear, dear friend and coworker surely sits all alone, up to his neck in a pawn that won’t comply or coding that defies all logic or whatever it is that Dostoyevsky even does–for Gogol finds himself rather unaware of such things even when Dostoyevsky explains it to him, such is the work as enigmatic as the worker–what else can Gogol be expected to do if not cheer him up?

And so, without even bothering to question whether or not his friend actually is in any sort of stress at the moment, Gogol shoots up and all but dashes to the door, only barely stopping to grab his cape before he goes. He does take careful pains to lock his door, however–unwelcome visitors are always troublesome.

The breeze is … not as cold as he’d expected, though why he expected cold weather at all in Japan is perhaps a mystery not even he can solve. It is cool though, a pleasant breeze even if not a cold one, and Gogol’s smile softens at it. 'We should visit a park or something later,’ he thinks, 'or perhaps look on the city from one of those Mafia buildings?’ He looks up in contemplation to try to see the four tall shapes. Sadly, they don’t appear in his line of view, but that can be fixed! Gogol swings around, walking backwards now and garnering a few stares but that doesn’t matter much now. Now that Gogol can see those dark pillars–and the alley he’s looking for is half a mile away–he gets lost in his imagination for what they could do there.

The breeze blows chillier than it does on the ground–much more akin to what the two are used to, picking up their capes and blowing them so far they look to be seeking escape–and the city lights twinkling below them could almost be pretty if they weren’t another sign of this world’s latent corruption. That doesn’t matter as much, though, Gogol is sure, since the wind still feels nice and his friend looks to be at some sort of peace for once.

"Hey, hey, Dos-kun?“ A grin stretches Gogol’s face as he comes up with a marvellous new joke, “What’s the synonym of both 'essential to society’ and 'ignorance’?! I’ll give you three guesses, though I’m sure you only need one!”

"There are many answers to that, how am I to know which one you mean?“

"Why, that’s the point!” Gogol laughs, loud and free, “If I weren’t vague, my audience wouldn’t have to guess and the quiz would be no fun at all!”

"That’s true.“ Dostoyevsky keeps his blank face faced towards the sparkling city as though lost in thought, but Gogol thinks it might just be less cold than usual. “Well then, in this case, your answer is 'the Port Mafia’, as they’re both essential to Yokohama’s society and incredibly ignorant for allowing us to slip onto their roof.”

"Excellent, bravo, that’s exactly correct!“ Gogol jumps up from the edge they’re both sitting on to proclaim in a sweeping gesture, "It’s a perfect answer, and since you replied so splendidly, I have a special offer!” He holds a hand out to Dostoyevsky–whose hand is gloved, for once; a fact for which Gogol is incredibly thankful–that’s then taken, although the latter doesn’t move to stand. “IIIIIIt’s 'Double or Nothing Time’!!! For the price of figuring out one more trick, I’ll double the prize you would have gotten! Beware though,” Gogol’s voice suddenly drops to a dire whisper, “for if you get this one wrong, you’ll lose everything and be doubly tricked.”

Dostoyevsky smiles slightly. “And do I have to stand for this new trick of yours?” he asks.

"Hm, no, I suppose not. Only give me a second.“ Gogol lets go of Dostoyevsky’s hand and pulls his cape across the top half of his body, vanishing it in front of Dostoyevsky’s eyes. Not for long though, as it’s back in front of him when he turns back to look at the city. And also a little too close for comfort. Dostoyevsky pokes Gogol in the chest, a signal for him to back up slightly, which he does with a laugh and 'floats’ there merrily in the air, simply grinning at Dostoyevsky for a moment.

"So this trick of yours is …” Dostoyevsky trails off, waiting for Gogol to finish–a request to which he happily complies.

"Yes! You see, I found this the other day,“ Gogol retrieves from his cloak a regular paper napkin, completely average in every way, and holds it out like it’s the Holy Grail, "and I just had to use it! So, my willing participant, if you would be so kind as to hold this for me,” Gogol rips the napkin in two and picks up Dostoyevsky’s right hand, placing one half inside of it, “and I’ll take the other one, see, and curl it up like so,” he crushes his half of the napkin into a ball about half the size of a tennis ball and holds it up with glee, “and viola!”

"… Your trick is a ball.“ Dostoyevsky stares at him, unimpressed. Gogol laughs again. "No, no! Not a ball,” he cackles, “the ball is only the beginning! No, though the ball is very nice, it’s what’s inside the ball that’s important! If the magician can’t get the special component outside of the ball, then there’s not much point at all, and everyone’s left unsatisfied!”

"And that is?“

"Magic, of course!”

"Of course.“

"Yes, sooo,” Gogol sways the ball around in front of Dostoyevsky’s eyes, “I want you to pay very special attention to this ball. Whatever you do, whatever happens, don’t, for even a second, let it out of your sight. If you do, then you automatically fail!”

Dostoyevsky nods.

"Alright! Now then,“ Gogol puts the ball into his cupped right hand, "as you can see, the ball is here now,” he closes his hand, “and now you don’t see it!” He laughs gaily, though sobers enough to continue when Dostoyevsky gives the ball an exasperated look. He opens his hand back up and takes the ball back with his left hand. “So now, when I put the ball in my hand for the second time and close it, you can be sure that, when I open it again, there will be only empty air! Ready?” Gogol grins wider at Dostoyevsky’s nod.

Now, here’s the tricky part. Gogol holds the hand with the ball just high enough that a quick flick should be out of Dostoyevsky’s periphrial vision, then quickly brings his left hand down as if he’s putting the ball in. He closes his hand and looks back to Dostoyevsky and … and Dostoyevsky’s not looking at him.

Rather than focusing on Gogol, like he’d wanted, Dostoyevsky had stayed true to his word and now looks towards the edge of the roof where the ball must have been swept off by the wind. Slowly, he turns his unimpressed expression back to Gogol, though Gogol doesn’t miss the tinge of humour in it. Gogol sighs. Well, it was worth a try. Though he’d hoped he’d get farther than that, it’s not like he didn’t expect–

"Ah, I see,“ Dostoyevsky continues with a smirk, cutting off Gogol’s train of thought, "so I’ve already been caught.” He holds up the hand that Gogol had taken at the very beginning palm-up to himself and sighs. Right there, though he’d been too distracted to notice it at the time–something Gogol takes great pride in–is a small, flat cylinder, not unlike a poker chip, with a counter counting down from about a minute on it.

Gogol makes a show of falling back out of his cape and laughs to the sky. “I knew you’d figure it out eventually! Though perhaps it’s too late?! After all, time’s running out and the release switch is who knows where.” Gogol grins mischievously, gloating over his assured victory. To his delight, it actually has the intended effect!

Dostoyevsky stands, smirk still there although merging with an outright smile now, and walks over to Gogol. Nonchalantly, as though he has all the time in the world, Dostoyevsky reaches into Gogol’s right hand and presses the button on the switch.

DING! DING! DING! DING!

Dostoyevsky jumps, startled, at Gogol chuckles and confetti flies out of the disk on Dostoyevsky’s hand, said disk falling to the ground shortly after.

"Happy birthday!“ Gogol shouts, throwing his arms up in excitement, "And may we wish for many more to come.”

"So that’s why you brought me up here?“ Dostoyevsky sits back down on the edge, raising a hand to his head. "That’s a long way and a lot of time for nothing, Gogol.”

"Certainly,“ Gogol says seriously, "That’s why it’s 'Much Ado About Nothing!’ If it was 'Much Ado About Something’ or 'Much Ado About Most Things’ then people wouldn’t be as interested! No, it’s 'Much Ado About Nothing’, and isn’t it such a luxury to have any ado not attributed to anything? I think so. And, wouldn’t you like to experience it too? If only for a little while.” Gogol smiles genuinely, taking a seat back beside Dostoyevsky and taking his hand.

"I hate to be the one to inform you of this,“ Dostoyevsky says, "but your whole existence could be said to be 'Much Ado About Nothing,’ and therefore insignificant.”

"Aah, but you see,“ Gogol leans in conspiratorially, "if I were to vanish from society today, it would have an effect. Not an immediate or noticeable one, perhaps, but an effect nonetheless. Therefore, even if you call my existence 'Much Ado About Nothing,’ my actions have to do with something! But anyway,” Gogol takes in a deep breath of air, suddenly becoming much calmer in the moment, “It’s true that I know how to have fanfare over trivialities, but you don’t seem to. It’s always the end or beginning of the world, but nothing ever happens outside of that. Wouldn’t you like to try, then, and take a step out of reality for even just a handful of minutes? Surely it wouldn’t be terrible.”

"Perhaps.“ Dostoyevsky’s smile becomes only that, then, and he sighs a sigh that Gogol might almost venture to call contented. "I hope you plan on cleaning the confetti, because I definitely won’t.”

Gogol laughs.

Coming out of his thoughts, Gogol notices the alleyway to his destination and grins. It’s just about time, then. Even if things won’t happen exactly the way he’d imagined them, just seeing Dostoyevsky soften is more than enough of a goal for the day!

With that in mind, he sweeps through his cape the rest of the way and ends up in a fairly cramped room. It’s a few doors behind an underground bar–'Lupin’ he remembers the sign said–that Dostoyevsky bought from the now-dead owner of the establishment. As such, the backroom that Gogol finds himself in isn’t too big, holding only a small group of pillows Gogol guesses could be called a bed, a single glowing bulb fixed into the ceiling, a desk, chair, and a few monitors. Why, exactly, Dostoyevsky decides to stay here, when there are plenty other–better–places to stay, Gogol has no idea. The former doesn’t seem to have a problem with the setup, however, as he’s … well, he’s doing something completely unexpected now that Gogol looks at him with properly adjusted eyes.

Dostoyevsky looks up from his book, the stark pink colouring of it seemingly shining in the dark room as he lowers it slightly. “Gogol. What brings you here?” He asks.

"My, you sound positively brimming with happiness at my visit! Can I not see friends when the boredom consumes me whole?“

"No, it’s not that you can’t, but you never do things without even a minuscule reason. Humans don’t.”

Gogol sighs. Working up to his fantasy will take time, but it’s time well-spent if it’s time with his friend. Or coworker. Dostoyevsky doesn’t seem to be in a good mood, after all. “Yes, and that boredom is my very reason! Usually you would get that … Oh no, is something seriously wrong?!”

"No, I understood that. But you have another motive, too.“ Dostoyevsky sets his book on the table next to him and leans back in his chair.

"Of course, of course,” Gogol relents, “because … No, but I’ll let you guess! What better way to get the mind working than a quiz?! And a quiz needs a hint! Let’s see, 'what rhymes with "calendar?”’“

"November. You’re here because of my birthday too then, but there’s no need and even less so since you have to break character to be here.”

"On the contrary, it’s very important! Even if not to you, then to the people around you, so,“ Gogol reaches into his cloak–and readjusts it while he’s at it. Had he really been so careless in throwing it on?��and pulls out a small-ish, lumpy yet neatly wrapped package, "I’ll let you guess what this is, and if you get it right, I’ll give you a second present!”

Dostoyevsky takes the package–irritably–and feels it, squishing and turning and making a mess of the packaging. Gogol watches in anticipation.

After a few moments, Dostoyevsky answers. “It’s a new ushanka.” Promptly, before Gogol can announce the verdict, Dostoyevsky rips open the packaging to reveal a hat exactly like the one he’s wearing. He sighs. “I already have one though. What’s the point in getting a new one?”

"Because!“ Gogol exclaims, "You were talking about that guy–”

"Dazai?“

"Maybe–you didn’t mention him by name–and I thought, since you were so peeved at him for wearing your hat, you’d want a new one that you could call unsullied by your nemesis!”

"I see.“ Dostoyevsky removes his hat and replaces it with the new one from Gogol. Much to Gogol’s delight, his expression does soften some as he feels at it on his head. "It’s softer,” Dostoyevsky says.

"Of course, your other one was getting rather old, too.“ Gogol smiles and pats Dostoyevsky on the head through his cape. "This one should be warmer as well, although I still don’t know how you manage to wear such furry clothes in the heat–”

"Thank you,“ Dostoyevsky says, smiling, "it’s nice.”

Gogol smiles back and moves closer to Dostoyevsky. “I haven’t forgotten about your second present either.” Slowly– to give Dostoyevsky enough time to move away if he wishes–Gogol slips his arms around him in a semi-awkward embrace and says simply, “Happy birthday.”

Dostoyevsky returns the hug, “Still, I can’t help but think this should be a time of mourning for you, too.”

When Gogol pulls back, Dostoyevsky is smiling cunningly. Gogol mildly worries. “E-Eh? Why would I mourn the day of your birth?”

"How about a quiz?“ The smile stays, and Gogol feels himself cornered before the conversation has even ended. "Since you like them so much, I’ll provide one this time.”

"Why thank you,“ Gogol laughs, pulling away completely to sit on the pillows across from him, and thinks aloud, "Let’s see, a reason to mourn Dos-kun’s birth … Because it’s bad for the world? But I don’t believe that! His existence hasn’t caused me any pain not of my own making, has been very beneficial, yet I have some reason to mourn it …” After a few moments of silence, Gogol finally throws his hands up in defeat. “I have no idea! I give up, so you’ll have to tell me.”

The now-smirk grows, “Because,” Dostoyevsky begins, as though explaining something to a schoolboy, “now you’ll no longer be able to make jokes of being the older one of us.”

Gogol’s eyes shoot wide open as he processes the new information. “Oh no!” He screams, “How could I have forgotten such an important detail?! You’re right. This is terrible, utterly awful! But alas, I must endure it … Yes, I’ll endure it for a few more months, and then all will be right again!”

"But you won’t,“ Dostoyevsky says, "because you won’t have the chance.”Gogol tilts his head in confusion. “What? Of course March will get here eventually! So why wouldn’t–” Just then, as though the realisation strikes him with a staggering force, he leans back onto the wall and his smile falls sad. “Ah, of course. I won’t be here for March.”

Dostoyevsky nods. “Precisely.” His expression becomes grim too, and he comes to sit next to Gogol. “So perhaps we should change the plan–it’s what I was thinking when you came in. There are a few ways about it, although the boss won’t like it very much, it’s not as though they can do anything about it if we decide not to go through with 'Sunday’s Tragedy,’ as you like to call it.”

Gogol shakes his head, a resolute smile on his lips. “No, that’d be no good. The whole point of Sunday’s Tragedy is that it happens. I wouldn’t have agreed to it if it went differently, so of course, we can’t change it. Don’t you already know that?”

Dostoyevsky sighs. “Yes,” he says simply, resting his head against the wall and looking at nothing in particular. There’s nothing else to say, Gogol supposes. Still, this isn’t how it was supposed to go. Dostoyevsky wasn’t supposed to end up depressed by the end–Gogol wasn’t either.

"It’s,“ Gogol says, "It’s going to turn out fine. After all, we’ve known each other for, say, about nine years now, and most of the plans you worked on came to fruition. Even if these plans are shared amongst others, I believe in the things you create, so you can believe in them too.” He takes Dostoyevsky’s hand, “I’m sure of it. You don’t have to worry.”

” … You put a mechanised party popper in my hand at a moment like this …“

"Ah, drat! And here I thought I was sneaky this time!” Gogol laughs nonetheless and takes out the release switch. “Well, since you figured it out so quickly, I suppose I’ll end it myself this time.”

Dostoyevsky’s eyes widen. “No, wait–”

DING! DING! DING! DING!

#bsd #ask #anonymous #fanfic

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