#they'd enjoy having rings. or some other memento

[saptaincwan]

i think i'm firmly in the camp of "cs marry each other for health insurance" and "they have the wedding though for snow and charming"

[border-spam]

Leech Lord - The thought that counts

Troy

Calypso is a bizarre, very weird man who's concept of a "gift" can be some hot drink Ven brought for him to a late night meeting, the time JK handed him a slightly rusted 1/4 socket wrench they'd spotted on a scrap pile while patrolling the slums and recalled him saying he'd have to ask Sei for the day before, or a photo of a flower Eli saw and sent on an incognito chat line.

What he considers gifts aren't usually that tangible so aren't things he can show to others, but there are some actual gifts he's held onto for far too long and people are fucking sick of being shown.

You ever see a coffee cup that hasn't been washed in eight years??

Well his friends have. Weekly.

Ty had "made it" for him in their first year planet-side, a shitty white .50c mug she'd crudely painted "Best Bro, lol" on in now peeling enamel. He knows it was a joke, but it doesn't change how that stupid gross mug has made him feel when things have been so bad that he's spent nights rolling it gently between a flesh and metal hand, reassuring himself with memories of the good times.

I mean he.. he cleans it, he rinses it out, but if he washed it properly the paint would just come straight off and that ain't happening. He drinks so much coffee. The poor thing gets refilled 4, 5 times a night sometimes, it's VILE looking. Brown and black stains, more rings than a felled steelwood tree running down the inside..

Ven hates it. Sei hates it. Eli smiles and tries not to die when he sees it. JK FUCKING LOVES IT. That mug is more Troy to them then his cruel prosthetic is, that mug is the most Troy thing on his damn ship.

Seifa has "politely" insisted on sealing it for him so he CAN wash it, but she's been told with frightening clarity that she’s not allowed near it. Leave it alone, it's fine.

Ven joke gifted him a pair of cursed-text booty shorts after two years of seeing The Holy Father’s ass crack daily and feeling his soul leave his body every time.

Troy took it as part insult / part challenge and made sure to actually wear them around Ven and make sure the other man was aware.

It went from hitching his pants just low enough in public to show their hem and smirking as they were recognised, to just straight up wearing them instead of his usual baggy harem pants some nights when he knew Ven would be spending a few hours in Sanctum.

Sei was completely in on this and acted nonchalant as her friend would desperately try to look around the room for support as his life-force withered while having to sit next to his boss in cursed hotpants and everyone else treating it like it was completely normal.

That stopped when Sei wasn't around, that kind of bullshit just didn't feel right.

He still has them though. They'll.. make a return one day, and Ven won't be ready.

Seifa

On the gift front, she's got 2 modes

1 - Extremely expensive item of value:

Munny. Nice. Highly appreciates it but won't from a personal level ( unless it's also exceptionally catered to her like very carefully chosen jewelry ). She'll secure it somewhere behind lock and key in her ship, and take it out to fondle on her floor like a goblin if she's feeling down.

Sei won't use any expensive gifts for fear of somehow "wasting" then, a weird after effect of poverty and a knife edge upbringing, but she'll cover herself in platinum and diamonds AT HOME while watching bullshit on the E-Net and drinking wine. Think Jenna Marbles leeeshuring. Only does this in private, it's some odd way of enjoying the things she's been given without fear of somehow devaluing them. She's fuckin weird. She is a weird person, she's just very close to even weirder monster twins and they distract a lot of attention from her strangeness.

2 - Piece of shit someone found in a flea market and thought of her or made for her poorly:

What the fuck. What the fuck. Treasure. Will go all red eyed and mouth wobbly when given it, won't know what the hell to say. Will use / wear / show it off daily. Will proudly point out gifts like this in her ship to visitors, go over who gave it to her, where it's from, what that person means to her, everything.

If it's wearable it will be patched into or worn with her best outfits bar ceremonial garb. She's covered in little mementos of friends and colleagues she takes massive comfort from by having close to her at all times, 'specially as some are too far away to see that often, or aren't around at all anymore.

The pendant Ven surprised her with has found its way into almost every ensemble she wears, it's on next to scrap chains and fool’s gold when she's elbow deep in a Mechanicum's process machine's axle oil, and it's on when she's dripping in platinum and faux giggling at a gala. This is... noticed by Troy, who is silently aware of how the shockingly expensive jewelry he's been gifting her for years remains stashed in lockboxes around her ship while Ven's bit of glass rarely leaves her skin. He finds it harder to ignore the blue-green glint of it far more than he'd want anyone to know.

He sent her a droid, years ago. She picked it up from a holding dock in a grimy but carefully packaged parcel and loved it at first sight. Tiny little hive-drone, smaller than her fist and mashed together from what looked like scrap - ancient LED screen able to just about render a simple smiley face with oversized pixels. A chicken scratch note about how they were doing well, things had been going great and they'd really started to find their footing now. 

Lines about Tyreen being a pain in the ass, how he'd been having fun with this stuff - droids, that she'd been right that he should try messing around with the amount of scrap bots you could find in any junkpile across Pandora. Said he'd made this for her because he remembered her ship had no V.I. network and how half the rec-room was covered in notes she'd end up having to take to keep on top of deals and interesting tips. This little floating ball could link with her E-Dev and convert audio into notes, calender bookings, maybe make her life a bit easier? Cause she had made theirs easier, him and Ty's, hadn't she. He wanted to give her something back. When would she be touching down again anyway? Been nearly a year since they’d left her ship to make a name for themselves.. and he had a lot to show her...

She still uses that little droid daily, chats idly to it as it sits on her office desk in the Mechanicum, blinking crude emojis at her as it happily translates Sei’s cranky mutters into a schedule that makes her life just a bit easier.

JK's silent hand over of something heavy and palm sized wrapped so beautifully in patterned cloth had keyed her in on not opening it till she was alone, but that prescription lens...

Fitted so carefully onto a hinged frame she knew at a glance would socket over her favored welding goggles? The crude but confident metal work, the tiny flicks of coloured paint she recognised and warmed her heart immediately? That asshole.. that beautiful, clever bastard.

Said nothing, knew she didn't need to, but it's been YEARS and she still notices the slight puff to their chest and way they straighten a little taller when they spot it perched over her right eye.

Asks are open!

[likethetailofacomet]

Stuck on Band-Aid Brand

A/N: moving right along through the #ChaosQueen’s wip word challenges. this one made me giggle. and it’s cute. for once I am posting fluff on a friday instead of hurting drake and claire or infecting the es crew with zombieism. mark this day on the calendar. anywho, enjoy this bit if silliness. you especially, @sleepwalkingelite.

Pairings: Ben x Rachael, Seth x Emma

Word Count: 2,540

Prompt: from @ooo-barff-ooo

Rachael flopped down into the cushions. The long, rectangular couch was askew, diagonally placed in her new living room, surrounded by boxes and other pieces of furniture. Seth and Emma had just left after helping her haul all of her stuff up into the freight elevator. Emma had, much to her relief, finished filming the running scenes for Finisher: The Katherine Switzer Story, so she was no longer sore and stiff with every step she took, and instead was using her new muscles to try to out-do Seth for who could carry more boxes.

“You kidding me, Iowa? No contest!” Seth scoffed, bending at the knees to lift the box marked “Dishes”.

“We’ll see who’s kidding when I beat you up the stairs with this,” she cocked an eyebrow at him challengingly and bent to lift a box marked “Towels” before taking off, her long legs turning over quickly as she headed for the stairwell.

Seth chuckled as he watched her go, her ponytail swinging in the sunshine. “You have no intention of racing her, do you?” Rachael asked with an amused quirk of her lips, slinging two duffle bags over her shoulders and grabbing a plastic crate containing two houseplants.

“None at all,” he said with a grin as he winked at her and headed towards the front door of her new building. He adjusted the box in his arms and opened the door for her and the two of them grabbed an elevator to the tenth floor. “So,” Seth turned to her once the large brass doors had slid closed and the lights started dinging off the floors they passed. “Excited?” he asked, knowing that she was.

A genuine smile lit up her whole face as she nodded enthusiastically. “You have no idea,” she answered, although she knew that he did have some idea. She and Emma had been friends since college, meaning that Seth, even though he’d only met her in person about two years ago, knew quite a lot about the woman standing next to him. He knew that it had been her dream to move to the Golden State for years. She loved the sunshine and the temperature, loved the beach and the breeze, had favorite restaurants and bars from the dozen or so times that she had visited. He knew that recently she’d had even more of a reason to want to make the move.

She and Ben had been keeping up with a long distance relationship ever since the night of the Golden Globes when they'd made things official inside the pillow fort she'd insisted that they erect. It had been hard, especially since Rachael quickly put the kibosh on his weekly flights back and forth to see her while he was filming in Europe- “It’s just a huge waste of money, Ben, normal people don’t fly across the Atlantic once a week to get coffee,” she’d told him, delicately of course as she knew he was just happy to get the chance to spend time with her. She was too, but she hated the idea of them needing to be so extravagant just to make their relationship work. “We can do this, really do this, I mean,” she’d told him at the airport after their week together during awards season. She was heading back home to Ohio and he was staying put to start work on his next role, and they were both a little nervous about not knowing when they’d see one another again, especially as things were still so new.

“How can you be so sure?” He’d asked her, a faint hint of sadness in his usually cheerful voice. He had his arm around her as they sat in one of the hard backed benches at the airport, waiting for her flight to be called.

Rachael smiled at him and brushed her fingertips across his forehead, sweeping some hair out of his onyx eyes. It had grown long again, like she loved, and she hated not knowing when she’d get to run her hands through it again, but she knew that she would and that’s what she was choosing to focus on. She kissed the tip of his nose and as she leaned back to speak she saw the way his smile made his nose crinkle and that tiny little involuntary reaction made her certain of her next words. “I can be so sure,” she began, dropping her hand to his knee, “because I know there’s no way I’m letting you go, and I know you’re not a quitter. I trust you, and I know myself, and,” she shrugged, a smile on her lips despite the missing him that had already settled in her heart, “and I just... some things you just know, Ben, and this is one of those things.”

He tilted his head to the side. The smile started in his eyes but quickly spread to the rest of his face. “You’re right. I’m not a quitter. And even if I was,” he leaned his forehead against hers, “I’d have to be a quitter AND a fool to quit on you. I,” he was interrupted by the overhead announcement calling her flight, and he sighed, standing and extending his hand to help her up. “That’s you, love.” He’d walked her as far as he could and left her with a sweet, slow kiss that she’d feel on her lips for days. “Have a safe flight, call me as soon as you land…I miss you already.” She’d boarded the plane without looking back because to do so would have been to sabotage the plan, would have sent her right back to his arms, and she needed the plan to work.

The plan being kicking some ass at her current job to beef up her resume enough to go and snag that dream job of hers. She needed a reason to move to California that wasn’t Ben, and for that she needed this job. She’d been secretly wanting and wishing for it for years, only letting Emma know how badly she really wanted it, and exactly 4 months to the day from the last time she saw him, she got to call him with the news that she was going to be the new Director of Marketing for the L.A. Angels, and would need to move to Los Angeles ASAP. It had been a rough couple of months for both of them, despite Rachael’s insistence that a little struggle up front would strengthen them in the long run, and despite Ben agreeing, being apart from the only one you wanted to see every day was tough. But now, for at least most of the year, they'd be in the same city, and she couldn’t have been happier to have all of the pieces of her life fall into place. Dream job, check. Dream Guy, check. Living in the same town as her best friend, check.

It was now roughly 7pm and they'd started moving at 9 that morning. She marveled at how much stuff she actually had. Nothing like a cross country move to prove to yourself that you need to purge your t- shirt collection, she thought, although at the same time she knew that those t- shirts were precious mementos from road trips and concerts, baseball games and other events, and she'd never really part with them. The sun was setting outside her window but the air coming in was still warm- ah, she thought, California living at last. She smiled as she remembered his text from that morning, apologizing for not being able to help with the move due to his shooting schedule, but assuring her that he'd be there as soon as he could to celebrate and help her feel more at home. He’d asked her to call him once Seth and Emma had cleared out, promising that he’d answer if he could. She was exhausted and hungry and verging on cranky, but she knew that would all disappear as soon as she heard his voice. She dialed his number hoping beyond hope that he’d be able to answer, and on the third ring she got her wish. Sort of.

“He-“ he sucked in a breath that sounded painful, “Hello? Rach?”

She sat up fully alert at the tone of his voice. “Ben? What’s wrong?”

A halfhearted chuckle came through the speaker and then another wincing sound. “Sorry, can’t really talk right now, love. Had a little mishap on set, getting bandaged up as we speak. But- ah- I’m through for the day, so I’ll be leaving here as soon as this is done and I’ll come right over.”

They’d ended the call but it hadn’t made her feel any better. From what she had heard from him about this new project, he was doing a handful of his own stunt work which had made her nervous, and now it seemed she had good reason. She suddenly got a second wind from the adrenaline of worrying, so she tried to keep busy with unpacking until she heard from him again or until he showed up, but it was no use. She couldn’t stop wondering what had happened and how bad it was. Haven’t seen him in four months and the day I get here he’s hurt. What kind of luck is that? She paced around with her phone in her hand texting Emma to ask all manner of questions about what could go wrong on set, what kind of injury it could be, and just looking for some comfort. I’m sure it’s nothing too bad, Rach, he was on set not at the hospital, right?

Rachael groaned. She hadn’t even thought about the possibility of him needing to go to the hospital. HOSPITAL???? No, on set…I THINK!?! OMG. She responded. She was just about to try to call him again when there was a buzz from her intercom telling her that there was someone at the door. She practically flew to the speaker to answer it, catching her foot on a box and stumbling noisily, letting out an audible, “Ouch! Damnit!” She hopped back to balance and pressed the button to let him in, tapping her leg nervously until he reached her floor and she head a knock. When she did, her fingers flew to unlock the bolts and she flung the door open, eyes wide and breath held. “Ben!” she gasped as he entered and her eyes roved all over him. She grabbed his hand and lifted his arm, turning it over to look for any sign of injury but, confusingly, not seeing anything. No cast, no visible stiches, he wasn’t in a sling. “Ben,” she said again, this time a little less frantically, “what happened? Are you…you said you were hurt…” she wrapped her arms around his waist carefully, not wanting to squeeze too tight in case there was something she was missing.

He smiled down at her and reached behind him to capture her hands in both of his. “Hey, calm down, love, it’s alright. I told you it was a minor mishap,” he said soothingly before he bent down to kiss her, and she momentarily forgot how worried she’d been, completely enraptured by the kiss she’d been missing. When they broke apart he ran his hands up and down her arms. His dark eyes looked tired from a long day but they twinkled when he looked at her and she couldn’t help but feel a pleasant shiver run through her to see that look in his eyes. “God, I missed you,” he said softly.

“I missed you too,” she said dreamily, almost in disbelief that he was there and she had moved and this wasn’t just a quick visit but an everyday possibility. But she shook her head, remembering the painful hiss she’d heard from him on the phone. “But what happened? I was worried, you sounded…” she bit her lip. “It sounded like you were in pain and…”

He made a sheepish face, cheeks pulling up and causing the corners of his eyes to crinkle as he shrugged one shoulder and let go of her hands. “Well,” he held up the arm that she hadn’t inspected, and for a second she still didn’t quite understand. There were no bruises, no scratches, nothing. “I told you it was minor,” he said as her eyes finally found the 2” x 2” adhesive square covering his elbow. “It really…” he looked away, almost embarrassed, “it was really silly, actually. I uh…well, there’s no way to say this and come off looking cool, but I tripped and fell and scraped up my elbow, and…Rach can you say something?”

Her eyes went wide. “THAT?” She gaped at him, blinking, and grabbed his arm to look closer. She fixed him with a look, eyes squinted and lips pressed together.

“Yes?” he grimaced realizing far too late that he’d caused her to worry far too much.

“Benjamin Thomas Barnes!” She pulled back from him and her nostrils flared. “THAT!” she pointed at his elbow, “is a BAND-AID! You said bandage and I thought…”

“I know…I’m just now seeing my poor word choice…but,” he ventured a smile, “in all fairness, Band-Aid is a brand. They are technically called bandages…even the box says-“

“I DON’T CARE WHAT THE BOX SAYS!”

“Darling, I haven’t seen you in way too long…” he watched as she visibly softened at the word darling, some of the steam coming from her ears dissipating, and was glad that at least this time he’d chosen the right word. “I’d rather not be screamed at for a piece of sticky plastic if it’s all the same to you.” He kissed her on the cheek.

“Well,” she said, clearly trying to stay mad but clearly failing, “well, I’d rather I didn’t spend the last hour and a half panicking,” she said, scrolling through her texts with Emma to show him. She shook her head as a small laugh finally fell from her lips. “But really…I’m just glad you’re okay. And you’re here.” She wrapped her arms around him again and this time didn’t hold back on the squeeze. She felt his arms come around her, too, feeling a bit bulkier than their last hug. That stunt work and the subsequent necessary workout regimen was certainly working out for him.

“Me too,” he sighed into her hair. “I’m so glad you’re here, and you’re here to stay.” His face was still pressed into her hair and she could feel him smile as he spoke. “And you’re mine.”

“I sure am,” she said before pulling away to look up at her. “And as such, I’m gonna need you to comply and call these,” she pointed at his elbow, “Band-aids from now on, you know, to avoid giving me a heart attack again. Deal?”

“Deal, but only because it’s you.” He grinned, his white teeth flashing and that mischievous look in his eye that could only mean one thing. “But I bet our friends would agree with me.”

Rachael rolled her eyes. “Seth. You mean Seth. Seth will agree with anything if he thinks it’s a) funny or b) funny. So, yeah, safe to say you’re right. But we’ll test that theory tomorrow, huh? Tonight I’d rather just…” she sighed and trailed off.

“Yeah,” he said, that smile back and growing, “Me too.”

. . . . .

Tags: @sleepwalkingelite @ooo-barff-ooo @zaffrenotes @brightpinkpeppercorn @kellypenac

[kane-and-griffin]

OMG I am so excited Kabby is baaack! Loved the bandage check moment in the premiere! Wondering if you think they'll address Abby's wedding ring on her finger/neck. You think they'd ever have her remove either at some point? If so, when do you see that happening , like at what point and context?

I’m pretty sure Paige just confirmed on Twitter that we’re gonna see it NEXT WEEK and I’m super hyped about it because my hope is that it means we get a real conversation or moment that’s about Jake.  I have a lot of thoughts or headcanons about what I might want to have happen with the rings (my fave would be either for her and Clarke and Kane to have a little ceremony and bury them at the Eden Tree so Jake and Vera are together and that’s their place they go to remember them, or that fic I love but forget the name/author of SOMEONE HELP ME OUT HERE where Raven welds them into an infinity symbol necklace for Clarke to wear).  @brittanias is voting for Abby giving the rings to Kane for safekeeping before she leaves for whatever her mysterious mission is on that boat in 404, and I also know there’s a strong contingent rooting for her putting her ring on the chain with Jake’s ring and keeping them both around her neck, which I would also love. I think it’s likely that they will come off at some point in advance of the scene where they’re in bed together, because I feel like that emotional throughline makes a lot of sense; like if we see her making the decision to go to Kane’s room, like she’s consciously making the choice to take that next step, and removing the rings is part of that process of moving on.

My mother died nine years ago, and my father remarried about a year and a half after that.  I have my parents’ wedding rings.  They live in a little tray on the top of my dresser with my jewelry, where I can look at them every day.  My mother had ALS, which causes your muscles to begin to atrophy, and after awhile her rings were too big to stay on her hand.  They got them resized, slicing a little piece out of the back of both her engagement and wedding rings so you can like bend and stretch them to fit, like you do with cheap plastic jewelry from the dollar store.  That worked for awhile, but eventually she just took them both off and put them on her dresser, where she could see them every day.  It didn’t make her and my father any less married.  They were together for thirty years.  In the last years of her life he had to bathe her and dress her and take her to the bathroom and feed her through a feeding tube.  The rings weren’t the factor that determined how married they were.  They were a symbol, but they weren’t the whole.

My dad took his wedding ring off after my mom died.  I don’t know when.  We didn’t have a conversation about it.  But at some point when his relationship with my stepmom was becoming serious, his wedding ring appeared in the little tray next to my mom’s on the little dresser where we still kept her jewelry because nobody was ready to get rid of her things yet - except for my brother, who was still living in the family house and moved into my parents’ bedroom when my dad moved in with my stepmother.  He had to share a closet with his dead mother’s clothes every morning and it was starting to make him crazy.  We had an estate sale a year or so after she died, and cleared out the dressers and the closets.  I took the jewelry back to my house, my parents’ rings with it.  I told my brother if he wants the rings someday, if he ever asks the feminist archaeology major from New Mexico to marry him, he should take Mom’s if he wants it.  And if not him, they can go to someone else, or they can stay in their little dish on my dresser.  Either way, our mom is still our mom.

We were in family therapy for a little while after my mom died.  The four of us siblings felt like my dad had started dating again too quickly, and my stepmom was someone we had known before, whose kids had grown up with my youngest brother.  We knew her from soccer and basketball games, and sometimes she and my mom and my sister and I would go out to this little wine bar near our house together and talk about politics or books or her divorce.  We liked her as a human being, but not as our dad’s girlfriend, because our dad wasn’t supposed to HAVE a girlfriend, and our mother had only been dead for six months and she had been the center of our lives, and we had gone collectively a little insane from mother grief, so all we did was cope badly (drinking for my sister, food for me, putting headphones on and shutting the world out playing video games for one brother, hostility for the other one).  My sister and I both got therapists, but none of the boys would.  We finally talked them into group family therapy, which was such a disaster that we quit after four sessions.  I blocked out a lot of that time, because it was so traumatic to go from being a family who had always been this unbreakably strong unit to being these people who got angry and said unforgivable things to each other.  So I only have one really clear, vivid memory from those therapy sessions.  I remember sitting on this couch next to my youngest brother, my other two siblings across from me and my dad in a chair next to the therapist.  I was crying so hard I couldn’t see anything clearly.  The therapist asked me point-blank if my father being in a relationship made me feel like he had forgotten my mother or didn’t love her anymore.  I wanted to lie, but I told the truth.  I said yes.  It did.  That was how it felt.  The therapist asked my father, “How does that make you feel?” And I was grateful, then, that I was crying too hard to see anything, because his voice was one of the most terrible things I have ever experienced.  So quiet and so broken and so sad.  “It makes me feel awful,” he said.  “We were married for thirty years.  She was the love of my life.”

I know this isn’t an answer to the question that you actually asked me, Anon, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because when the fandom talks about Abby and Jake and their wedding rings and what they mean, on some level it always feels personal to me.  When someone says that it would mean Abby was forgetting Jake if she ever took the ring off her hand, I think about sitting in the living room with my siblings and my stepmom and my stepbrothers while my dad told us college stories about my mom, and how my stepmother enjoys them just as much as we do, because she knew my mom and what she meant to all of us, and how the fact that my dad wears a different ring now doesn’t mean my mom isn’t with us every day.  When I hear people say that the headcanons about Abby passing both rings onto Clarke as a memento are a betrayal of Jake’s memory and it’s wrong for Clarke to have them, I think about my parents’ rings sitting on my dresser. 

This has gone quite a bit sideways from your original question, which is something that I tend to do from time to time, but this is a question that has popped up in the fandom before and stirred up a lot of emotions, and erupted over the past few days since we got those promo photos where Abby isn’t wearing the ring anymore, and I’ve been thinking a lot of thoughts about it that I’ve been trying to articulate.  

I think everyone has the right to their own opinions, their own headcanons, their own feelings about what they’d LIKE to see happen with the rings, but the fact of the matter is that both options - Abby continues to wear the rings forever, maybe adding a second one on her hand next to the first; or, alternately, Abby removes the rings when she is ready to move on - are deeply personal things that real people do, which are intimately connected with the specifics of that individual person’s grieving.  There isn’t a right or a wrong.  There isn’t a “you’re disrespecting the person you lost by grieving them incorrectly.”  The only right thing is whatever Abby decides.