#took me at least a minute to even find the source of the sudden artistic aspirations

[tjerra14]

redecorated my bathroom children's hospital style via mystery finger cut, I think it might be time for bed

[nkn0va]

THE 100 FOLLOWER SPECIAL

The homie @devfps found a thing for me. As a Seth main myself, I am now morally obligated to write the first ever genderbend Under Night x reader piece. And also I figured it was about time Under Night took a spotlight for once since it's mostly Blazblue. What better way to do that than write a very special oneshot for my main in this game as a little love letter of sorts to the most underrated fighting game on the market.

Also I know some of you might've been expecting an event of some kind but my inbox is way too full for that right now lmao

Also don't be surprised if shadow edits are made to make it better at any point in the future (In trying to find the source of the art, the artists' account has unfortunately been deleted/banned. It was found in a FB group reposting it. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/SLBCyMmzbFvTqtaZ/?mibextid=qi2Omg)

(After all my 5 minutes of research, turns out the name Sethe exists, and is a girl name, so that makes my job a hell of a lot easier)

A soft, quiet sigh escaped her pale lips as the sound of the bell rang throughout the school. It was just one of those days, the ones that felt never-ending. Exams drawing near, projects piling up, all with winter fast approaching. As if the cold season put the world itself into stasis, freezing time down to a shivering cold crawl. Well, there was nothing she could do about it. No point in complaining to the world itself, not when it had a history of never paying attention to her silent pleas for help, it's uncaring apathy as cold as the air that blew this time of year.

Steel grey eyes peered out the window next to her desk as she stood up. It was already the first snow of the season. It definitely came far earlier than last year. At least she was prepared for such a possibility.

Sethe had come with a plain black sweater vest in place of her school uniform, just in case. She blended in enough with the crowd to avoid the teachers and not get chewed out for it. If the snow hadn't come, it was easy enough to go into the bathroom and change out of it. As she left the classroom and made her way out into the hall she reached into her bag and pulled out a long, blue scarf. A bit too long for her comparatively small, thin body, yes, but it got the job done, so no reason to complain about it.

At least that's what she thought.

The snow had already started to gather on and cover the ground, albeit not much. It had apparently been snowing quite a bit since lunch, it was already a good couple inches deep. Sethe made her way outside and immediately made for her way home, she had nothing else to do in this annoyance of an obligation, nor did she feel the need to find something. Her absent train of thought was soon interrupted by a sudden, chilling gust of wind that chilled her to the bone. Her arms instinctively wrapped around herself as she grit her teeth.

She stopped in place momentarily to recollect herself, but just as quickly resumed her walk. The trains were likely going to be packed to hell and back in this weather, it would be more efficient to just walk there, as much of a pain as it was. She didn't get much farther though before a familiar voice called out from behind her.

"Guess even weather like this isn't enough to slow you down, huh?"

Sethe immediately stopped once more, her posture straightening in surprise as her head whipped around, only to see s/o. "Learn to relax a bit, yeah? At least enough for me to catch up."

Her body had now turned a tad more in their direction, the lower part of her face obscured by the scarf. "You're saying that like you almost want me to stay at school for something." Her voice took on it's usual quiet, restrained tone, though without the usual apathy or even defensiveness it had during the occasional instances she talked to her peers. S/o just seemed to have that effect on her, she couldn't bring herself to chase them away if she tried.

"Hey now, I wasn't saying that. Is it really a crime to wanna walk home with my girlfriend, spend some much needed alone time with her?" As the words came out of S/o's mouth, Sethe felt her cheeks heat up slightly, though it was made a tad more noticeable by how pale she was. The thought of being in a relationship...it was never a thought that had occurred to her before, being so focused on the duty that's sworn herself to, to free the Night Blade's princess from her curse. That was at least until she met s/o.

"Well... I never meant to imply that, but..."

She was cut off by an amused chuckle from s/o before she could think of a response. "Come on, you know I'm just messing with you. Let me at least walk you home." They took a few steps to catch up and be at her side as Sethe silently nodded and the two resumed your walk.

It was a relatively long way to where she lived. For a while it was all but completely silent, only broken by the snow crunching with their footsteps. Yet for the both of them, it was a comfortable one. At least it was until another gust of wind sent them both shivering. This was not going to work. It was then Sethe got an idea.

"...Here. Come closer."

"O...k...?" S/o confusedly side stepped towards her, and before they could register what was happening they felt a cloth make it's way around their shoulders and circle back around towards Sethe. The reserved young woman herself though seemed almost more surprised by her own actions than you did. Her face turning noticeably more red.

"There...now we shouldn't at least be as cold like this. Just try not to fall behind." Sethe resumed her walking, s/o guided along by the scarf to follow suit. It wasn't a complete, foolproof way of staying warm amidst the cold, but it was better than nothing. And she'd be lying to herself if she tried saying s/o's body warmth wasn't at least somewhat of a comfort.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she immediately felt the heat start creeping up on her face, this time much more prominent than normal as it finally occurred to her. She had initiated intimacy with s/o. Granted it wasn't exactly much, but this was pretty much the first time she had done so. She looked toward the corner of her eye over to s/o to gauge their reaction. She didn't quite know what she expected, however she still found herself pleasantly surprised.

S/o's shivering had mostly stopped, now walking along with Sethe, seemingly perfectly peaceful and content. Yes, the two were dating, but it hadn't been for all that long yet. She almost couldn't believe it. Her presence seemed to be welcome for s/o, just like their was for her, despite her stoic attitude, how cold she could seem sometimes, just like the unpleasant weather they were being forced to trudge through. Yet her coldness was one that s/o seemed to not care about, not feel any less about her for.

"Sethe? Are you alright?" S/o's voce once again snapped her out of her thoughts, the blushing only intensifying.

"You're getting red. Nothing's wrong, right?"

She shook her head and looked forward once more, attempting to bury her face in the scarf a bit more as much as she could. "No, it's just the cold."

"You're not getting sick, are you? That's kinda the last thing you need right now with how hectic school's starting to get and all."

"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine." Sethe's reply didn't really convince s/o. Not the part about not being sick, but rather about the redness on her face. They were well aware intimacy was never her strong suit. However they knew openly teasing her about it was not wise, lest they wanted to ruin the moment. The one she had started for a change, no less. No reason to look a gift horse in the mouth, so they decided to quit while they were ahead.

Their body heat combined in the close proximity of the shared scarf as they both adjusted their paces to match the other. Despite the occasional winds that would bite at them, they were able to keep going, now having each other's warmth and support to stay strong. Their shoulders brushed against each other, as their body temperatures mingled and found solace from the biting cold in each other. At some point, s/o's gaze seemed to gravitate over to Sethe as well from the edge of their peripheral vision. They could spot the snowflakes starting to pepper her mostly black hair, protecting her delicate face from the precipitation. The setting sun was shining down on her, contrasting with her dark eyes in a way that seemed to set them ablaze in a subtle, yet genuine show of her natural beauty. S/o seriously couldn't figure out why she seemed to be so ignored by their shared peers, not when she practically stole their breath away in times like this. She seemed content with that however, so it probably wasn't their place to speak on it anyway. Not like they were complaining, to them it meant no one would be trying to hit on her.

The walk felt like it was lasting forever, though to both of them, that would've been far from the worst outcome, even if they didn't say that out loud. They probably didn't even need to in the first place. Unfortunately, it was proven to them once more that good things aren't always meant to last, Sethe's house soon coming into their view. The Night Blade assassin stopped as they came in front of it, making s/o stop to so as not to accidentally push her over.

"Well, here we are." She took back her scarf, gently pulling it off around s/o's shoulders. "The snow's not going away anytime soon. Are you sure you're gonna be fine making it back home?"

S/o gave a disarming wave of their hand. Despite Sethe trying to play it off casually, s/o knew better. There was concern for them deep down. "I can put up with the trains just fine. It'll be a pain right now, but at least I'm not gonna freeze."

Sethe nodded at their response. "Yeah, that might be the best course of action. I just don't want you getting yourself hurt."

As soon as the words left her mouth, she quickly realized what she said. Her face started turning red once more as she averted her gaze staying silent. Despite her instinct to quickly take back what she said, she knew that would only make her sound bad. She froze up, the words dying in her throat as s/o couldn't hold back the smile creeping onto their own face. Both in contentment and reassurance.

"I'll be fine, you can relax. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?" Despite herself, Sethe could only find herself smiling back. A small one, almost unnoticeable to most people, but a smile nonetheless. A reward for s/o after learning to spot these rare occasions she did.

"Well, tomorrow's a school day. A rather redundant question, no?"

S/o let out a light laugh, genuinely at peace in her presence. "Yeah fair enough. The reassurance still helps though, especially coming from you. I know I can always count on you."

The sudden profession caught Sethe off guard, her eyes widening slightly as they snapped back to s/o. "You...you can?"

S/o nodded, their facial expression making it seem as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Of course. It's probably the biggest reason I wanted to be with you. Even when we met, you never went back on your word. That kind of honesty isn't something you find every day. That determination is what I always admired about you the most."

Sethe was clearly not used to receiving compliments, no less such genuine ones from someone she cared about. There was no hiding her blush now, despite her trying to bury her face in the scarf and turning her head away. "I...I see..."

She wanted to return the favor. All the reasons she felt the same about s/o threatened to spill out all at once, but were almost painfully stopped by her own inhibition and nervousness. Her instinct telling her that sharing her feelings about them would only make them laugh or become uncomfortable, yet her rational mind telling her that was a stupid fear.

Much to her relief, s/o didn't seem off put by her silence, seeming to read her once again, just like the way they always did. That almost unreasonable amount of patience that could only come from truly caring about another person, the kind that Sethe was a stranger to up until only recently, but eventually one that could only bring the small yet genuine smile back to her face. They understood what she was feeling, and felt no reason to judge her or question her further.

S/o turned off to the side to leave. "You should head inside and warm up. I should be getting to doing the same. See you tomorrow." They raised their hand up in a wave and began to walk back they way they came, heading toward the train station.

Sethe stood where she was a bit longer, watching them as they slowly but surely disappeared into the distance. While they weren't looking, she gave her own small, subtle wave, feeling that strange but familiar warmth in her chest, the one she would only feel when around S/o.

That feeling welling up in her body, the one she only felt for S/o; that was what made her sure she was truly in love.

[demonslayedher]

Buriko-Senpai! This is such a wonderful blog to read, and I love your art so much! It's so nice to see other traditional artists out there! What's your thoughts on the demon slayer marks and their affects after Muzan's defeat? Do you think they're a purely physical effect, or a supernatural curse like Ubuyashiki's? It seems like in the latter case it would be lifted? In Tanjiro's status report, he mentions wanting everyone to be happy "when he's gone", and hints of preparation for the future...

Thank you for the kind words on my art! (≧◡≦) Glad to know people like the style, I like the feel of trad art both for the final product and how the pen feels in my hand, haha~. I love all the additional possibilities in digital art, but will leave that to the people who are good at it. Glad you find my blog a good read too, because we’ve got another lengthy read ahead.

As for the mark and whether it works in a purely physical sense or a curse sense, I'm ok thinking of it in either way, depending on its purposes in post-canon fanwork (but of course, you can do whatever you want in fanwork totally inventing the mark or completely ignoring it too). As Gotouge never states exactly what becomes of Tanjiro, Giyuu, and Sanemi, I don’t feel we can declare it working one way or another. We'll consider it from both angles, but in general, I think canon evidence leans toward an avoidable physical impact. Even that, however, leaves room for interpretation on strict "25" might be or not.

If we approach the curse direction first, the worldbuilding surrounding the Ubuyashiki curse gives a lot of framework for the mark being a curse. The second fanbook even gives us more circumstance and age-related perimeters that seem very arbitrary, like how only one male will survive each generation and how the daughters will also die young by sudden illness or accident if they don’t marry out. As the curse is tied to Muzan’s/demons existence, it is completely lifted once Muzan is eradicated, but Kiriya still anticipates dying in his 20’s and does not feel relieved that it’s gone until he’s in his 30’s. This would put Giyuu and Sanemi in their 50’s if they’re still around, and with their own curses effectively gone, they’d probably have spent the past couple decades insisting to Kiriya that he can relax.

If the rebound of the mark is a supernatural curse, there are a couple other things that make sense about this to me, in the light of cosmic justice at play in this universe. First, it’s a general rule in a lot of philosophies and other works of fiction that to gain something powerful, you must pay the price and sacrifice something. Second, the Ubuyashiki family is cursed to carry the sins of one of its members until they can stop that demon member. While Demon Slayers may not necessarily be carrying the sins of demons, we see demon marks at play in this series first, though its effects are not clear until we see how Nezuko is stronger when her vines appear. A Demon Slayer also gaining extra strength like this is, perhaps, taboo.

As for the mark being a purely physical effect, I think the emphasis on physical effects of the mark (especially how in Chapter 129 Muichiro analyzes its effects on body temperature and the heart), and how throughout the manga it is continually stressed that the Demon Slayers are mere humans even if Breath helps them push the natural limits of human ability, lend to a more physical interpretation that in order to push so far past normal limits, it has to borrow against the natural human lifespan. This is how the characters in-universe also interpret its effects. If we look more into what Muichiro says:

Muichiro: The anger was too strong for me to have any handle on my emotions. I believe that in that moment, my heartrate exceeded 200 beats, and my body felt as hot as though it was burning. My temperature would had measured at least 39 degrees or more. Shinobu: !? Could you move like that? That would be life-threatening. Muichiro: Right. That’s why I think it’s a matter of falling into one category or another. Whether you die or survive that moment is what determines whether a mark will appear or not. Amane: A heartrate of over 200, and why a temperature of 39 degrees? Muichiro: That’s because when I was received treatment at Kocho-san’s place I was running a fever. When my temperature was taken, the thermometer read 39 degrees. At the time I would have been said to have a mark appear, my body was just as feverish.

(For reference, according to searching with the same terms used in the original text, your top heartrate is 220 minus your age, making Muichiro's 206 beats per minute. The average for someone in their 20's is 120~140, somewhat hard exercise would put it at 150, and hard exercise puts it at 170, according to the Borg scale. Normal body temperature in Celsius is 37 degrees; while 39 C = 102.2 F.)

If we look back at when Tanjiro is first facing off against Daki, he considers how he gets more power out of Hinokami Kagura than from Water Breathing because it suits his body better, but he is not yet physically capable of the switch between them. As he psyches himself out in Chapter 77, we see that he has physically been trying to prepare himself for this, and he’s shouting at himself to set his heart ablaze. Clearly, Tanjiro is leaning into that advice from Rengoku-san, and if he’s on his way to getting the mark, he’s been taking that advice somewhat literally.

In Chapter 78, as he purposely raises his own temperature to fight the side effects of switching to Hinokami Kagura, we get a flashback that Kiyo-chan was very worried that Tanjiro was running a temperature of 38 degrees (100.4 F) for three days, but Tanjiro begged her not to tell Shinobu yet because he felt fine in that sustained feverish state, and was able to put more power into Hinokami Kagura that way. (This may also be part of why the mark seems to have a different effect on Sun Breath users, as their body draws from this power in a more sustained way.)

We can probably think of most of the other Breath Users who attained the mark as having gotten it in a similar way to Muichiro. In a fit of high emotion and desperate battle, their body pulled from its natural reserves, and similar to a human and/or demon being exposed to lots of Muzan’s cells all at once and either dying or quickly adapting, they attained a mark and relied on that temporary extra burst of strength. While it either happens or doesn’t happen for the others (Muichiro plainly states he was unaware of a mark’s appearance) based on being the flow of tense battle, Himejima seemed to have gained enough ability that he could choose when he wanted to tap into that power. When we’re first left not knowing what else Amane told the Pillars, Himejima openly wonders what would happen in his case (seeing as he is over the age of 25). In the third light novel, we get a brief scene of Himejima pulling Muichiro aside after that meeting to ask if he’s alright with this, since he’s just found out that he has no chance already of living a long life. Muichiro is fine and wonders about Himejima, who is also fine with this. They both are willing to do whatever it takes to fight Upper Moons and know their survival has never been assured. Himejima goes on to say similar things to Kokushibo in Chapters 169 and 170, when we the readers are finally told about the limited life expectancy. The two of them both sort of expect Himejima to drop dead that night because of his limited stores to draw from. Himejima would had preferred to not raise his temperature so much until facing Muzan (seeing as he knows he’ll be racing against time), but knows he has no choice but to start while facing Kokushibo. Kokushibo is somewhat impressed with his control of getting a mark and his preparation to die, and he finds it a waste of Himejima’s ability and likewise is like, “why not preserve your flesh as a demon” because, as we find out in Kokushibo’s flashbacks in Chapter 178, this was part of what motivated him to accept Muzan’s blood. He couldn’t handle the frustration of his polished techniques being wiped out by a short life span, especially since it would mean he was soon out of time to match or best Yoriichi. If we go back to that conversation between Himejima and Kokushibo, Kokushibo loses his cool (hahaha, that feels like a bit of a pun here) the moment Himejima is like, “there was one exception to the rule though, wasn’t there?” I suspect that Yoriichi was the exception partly due to Sun Breathing being a more perfected, sustained form of pushing the limits of human capability, and Yoriichi being born naturally perfect at it, so his body didn’t need to scramble looking for extras sources of power like hastily (or slowly) borrowing against his lifespan. What’s very interesting about Kokushibo is that he also regularly sustained his mark, so perhaps it’s possible he could had lived past 25? Here's what really key: We also don’t know about these early marked users. Did they regularly sustain their marks, or did they only show up regularly when they battled demons, repeatedly borrowing against their future lifespan? Or was it a one-off thing for each of them, like it was for Giyuu and Sanemi? It’s possible that even if Giyuu and Sanemi are doomed to shorter lives, since they both only had the marks for relatively short periods of time on a single night, they might well exceed 25 years. The fact that Gotouge gave them descendants (as opposed to only implied reincarnations), and because they are both characters generally written as dense in the ways of love and close personal relationships, that sort of implies they needed some time before leaving behind offspring, and I hear a lot of voices in the fandom displeased with the idea of them leaving children behind when they know they won't be around to raise them. Since we don't know any canon details on this, let's cut the boys some slack and say they took a chance on being happy. After all, all their time in the Corp already teaches them tomorrow is never assured.

Side note while we’re on the Sanemi topic, he attains his mark right after Himejima brings his own forth (because Himejima is a badass who can just be like, “ok, now”). While he comments to Himejima what a good idea it was to do Pillar Training so he could attain that powerful state, it’s also possible that being in the presence of someone who already had one was part of what triggered Sanemi’s body to access that state as well. The nature of the mark’s spread from person to person is another tick in the “supernatural curse” box if people like that interpretation more.

Let’s take a look back at Tanjiro, though.

Tanjiro, our special Hinokami Kagura boy, was already a special case for his own knowledge of Sun Breathing (however imperfect), and his own sustained mark (though as Genya notes in Chapter 134, it tends to transform slowly, and as Tanjiro remarks in response to Shinjuro’s comments in Chapter 81, his mark was not something he was born with like the original Sun Breath user was, it was but a childhood injury which took on a different shape when he was injured at the Final Selection). While Amane cites him as the one who started the trickle of marks appearing again, we know in the Pleasure Quarter arc than Tanjiro was been unknowingly training himself to make the mark appear, like the Pillars later tried to do in training.

Tanjiro also, however, has the very unique experience of undergoing repeated cruel and unusual suffering in battle against Muzan, basically dying, turning into a demon with more of Muzan’s cells than any other demon in history, and turning human again with man-made medicine all in the span of about two hours.

We can’t really compare Tanjiro’s case to Giyuu’s and Sanemi’s very easily. Besides the slightly different nature of his mark (which Muzan says will still kill him anyway if he becomes human again, but whether he says that based on a cosmic rule or historical precident, we don't know), we simply don’t know all the details of how Tanjiro's flesh has been affected by everything that happened to him in that two hour period. It seems safe to say that becoming a demon is what saved his life since it rebuilt his flesh and supercharged life back into him, but since he wasn’t a demon long enough to have fully integrated those new cells, the entirely reconstructed parts of him (his left arm and right eye) are essentially lifeless. However, there may still be some amount of reclaiming that his body did during his demon minutes, for the whole right side of his face should be paralyzed (yet he can still use it expressively), and there was probably internal damage throughout his entire body and other various injuries (like stabbing himself) which were repaired enough for him to survive. Had he been a demon longer (long enough that his body with Muzan’s memories likely would had broken down the medicine Kanao gave him), my guess is that he would had fully integrated these body parts, like how Nezuko gets to keep her legs despite all the times they were blown or chopped off.

But we also know that Tanjiro had to take a few months to recover (his visitors looked like they waited the whole three months before getting permission to see him), and that his condition allows him to live and work, but he generally is in a weakened state. Again, rather than only having borrowed (on multiple occasions) against his own lifespan, we don't know the extent of the damage and repair he's undergone.

While he’s got 25 as a historical benchmark to anticipate, and as you mention, he does seem to fully anticipate that early demise, his case is so unique that it could go in any direction. Tanjiro might live longer than 25, as this would give him time to pass on Hinokami Kagura to at least his eldest son, but like Tanjuro, he’d probably have a pretty weak constitution for the rest of his dwindling life. But also worth noting, the phrase is that they die by at least age 25. That means some of the Warring States era swordsmen probably died before that age. (｡•́︿•̀｡) I don't feel this is likely for Tanjiro, Giyuu, and Sanemi, but it is worth noting as a possibility.

[all-my-love-for-harry]

Delicate. — Part 1.

word count: 2.6k

a/n: Here we are fam, i gotta be honest with y’all, this is heavily inspired in the fact that i watched Miss Americana twice this month, what resulted in me going through my taylor swfit phase again. Pls bare with me, i haven’t written anything like this before.

catch up here!

They said artists become what they are because deep down they are as insecure if not more than normal people. Because they craved constant validation in what they do. 

At least it was the case for Y/n. 

A girl who has built an entire system around being accepted by the public, someone who their major source of happiness is provided by strangers all around the world. When you are living from the approval of strangers and that is where you drive all your joy and fulfillment, one bad thing can cause everything to go down. Y/n has spent her whole life trying to please the world so they would like her, so what she has achieved over the years would last. 

When the world turned their back on her, Y/n had no choice but to disappear, because she thought that was what everyone wanted. Even then, she made her choices around what she thought would make them happy.

Y/n knew she could not hide forever, but for now, it was a necessary evil she had to take. Deciding to take a break from everything was the healthiest decision she has ever made, shutting down her social media, getting out of the city and going back home with her family was exactly what she needed. 

"Mom was sad she couldn't pick you up from the airport."

Seventeen-year-old Jensen, whose driving license was still new and fresh, was the one who picked Y/n up when her flight landed. In complete honesty, she did not like using a private plane, but she could not risk someone seeing where she was going. Jensen was good at driving, well, he has not crashed into a tree yet, so they were safe. 

"She would've brought Chase and scare Pandora and Lizzie." 

Jensen chuckled. "She's obsessed with him. I haven't started college yet and she's already thinking about turning my room into Chase's." 

Her parents’ house was a gated property away from others since it was safer that way. Y/n would not stay there the whole time since she had her own apartment a little closer to town. Her luggage, as well as her cats, were picked up separately and taken to her home, she would go there after lunch with her family. Jensen parked next to a black range rover that belonged to their dad, meaning both of their parents were home. 

Y/n threw her backpack over her shoulder as she stepped out of the car, eager to finally reunite with her family, especially her mother. She is in desperate need of a tight hug, a mug of hot chocolate and a shoulder to cry on. Y/n did not realize how mentally drained she was until she saw her mother open the front door. 

"My baby!" Louise exclaimed, embracing her daughter in a tight hug. "How was the flight?" 

"It was fine. I'm starving though." 

They walked into the living room and Louise closed the door behind them. Y/n dropped her backpack on one of the couches and sighed in relief. “Where’s dad?” Jensen went straight to the kitchen and opened the fridge.

“Get the white wine.” Y/n told him.

“It’s too early to drink that.” Louise took the bottle from Jensen’s hands and put it back in the fridge. “Dad’s outside. We bought some roses that will look beautiful by the pool.”

“You’re buying a lot of plants lately.” Y/n pointed a big vase full of daisies, her mom’s favorites, on the kitchen’s island. 

“I like supporting local business.” She shrugged.

“That and she’s obsessed with the owner of the flower shop.” Jensen chuckled, cracking open a water bottle. 

“Hey! That’s not true.” 

“Mom, you there like… every day. Who needs new flowers every day?”

“Shush.” The elder woman faked offense then gigged. “Handsome young man, he is. I’ll take you tomorrow.” She turned to Y/n. 

“Oh, no, mom. I’m going to lock myself in my apartment and try to write.” She said, making Louise scoff. “I’m serious!”

“I know you are. But living like a hermit is not going to do you any good.”

“I agree, sis.” 

Y/n rolled her eyes, knowing they were right as always but did not want to admit it. The truth was, she wanted to write some songs, so badly, but could not find the right words. She was hoping to get some peace and quiet to get her ideas and emotions in order again. Before any of them could say anything else, David entered the kitchen while taking off his gardening gloves and smiled widely when he spotted Y/n.

“And who do we have here?”

“Hi, dad.” Y/n smiled at him brightly before wrapping her arms around her dad, who hugged her back just as tight. 

“Good to have you home, darling.” 

The family of four sat on the kitchen island and started to catch up. Jensen talked about his different college options and how he was considering getting a summer job this year. Louise kept talking about how nice the owner of this flower shop was, making emphasis on how he was also single. Y/n didn’t know what she was trying to do, but she didn’t pay much attention either. 

Overall it was nice for Y/n to get out of her head for a little bit, and her family was always a great help for that. She knew she still had a lot to deal with, and she would probably get a call from her publicist and a lot of other people soon, but for now, she just wanted to think about anything else that wasn't the whole world hating on her. 

"How are you doing, Y/n? Be honest." Her mom asked after they stayed alone in the kitchen.

"Been better." She sighed. "I don't want to think about it, mom."

"You have to talk to someone, sweetie. I know your team cares for you and is trying to handle the situation, but you can still talk to me."

"I know, thank you. I'm just trying to figure it what I'm going to do."

Louise sighed. "You sure you don't want to stay here? You have your room and everything."

"Thanks for the offer, mom. But I sort of want to be on my own." She said. "But I'll come for lunch every day, I promise."

Although Louise wasn't convinced by her daughter's words, she chose to not push it. She knew Y/n had her own ways to express her feelings, and she'd talk whenever she felt like it. So she let her go, making her promise she'd come to visit soon.

"Do you need a ride? I'm going to town anyway." Jensen offered, taking the keys of his car from the little plate they kept on the table beside the front door. 

"Yes, please."

The drive to her apartment wasn't a long one, and in less than ten minutes she was opening her front door and being greeted by her two beautiful cats rubbing themselves on her legs. Y/n sighed, thinking about how much she needed to unpack now that she was here. The truth was, she didn't know for how long she'd be staying here, but she figured it'd be a long time so she packed a lot. Now she kind of regretted it because she would probably be in her pajamas all day anyway. 

After cleaning Pandora and Lizzie's sandbox, Y/n decided to grab an acoustic guitar and try to come up with some melodies. She wasn't quite sure about any lyrics yet, but it was always good to have a little something to start a song. 

She went from playing the guitar to play the piano, hoping she'd get more inspirations somewhere. But she had nothing. Not even one decent note. She was empty. 

"Don't pretend is... mhmm. Think about the... No." She groaned and slammed the palm of her hands on the keyboard, growing frustrated. Why all of a sudden she couldn't even rhyme? Maybe she needed a break, or perhaps she was tired from her flight and tomorrow she'd be able to write something.

//

Turns out her writer's block was here to stay. A week has passed since her arrival and Y/n hasn't been able to finish one single song. Everything she started ended up being erased or in the middle of her living room after the ripped the page off her journal. 

"I told you, you shouldn't hurry. Inspiration will come eventually, it always does."

"I guess. I just have nothing else to do other than play scrabble with you and write songs, or at least try to."

"Let me take out then." Louise started and Y/n shakes her head. "C'mon, let's eat somewhere or buy groceries and I'll cock at your place." Y/n looked at her mom and realized she wouldn't stop until she accepted, so Y/n offered Louise a nod. "Marvelous. There's this little café that I absolutely love. You'll love the owner."

"What is it with you and the owners of local shops?"

"They're my friends. Oh! We could drop by Blossom House. You could use some flowers around your house so it would look like somebody actually lives there."

"Stop dragging me, woman."

Louise drove them to this café called Furry Cakes, which turned out to be a cat café. Y/n obviously lost it as soon as they walked in, and nearly cried when she saw all the kittens, and absolutely shed a tear when the girl behind the register said every kitty except for one named Chaster was up for adoption. She felt like a little girl all over again when her mom told her she couldn't take every single kitty home. 

Y/n was wearing a hoodie that was twice her size, plus some big sunglasses she refused to take off, even inside of the café. She was praying she wouldn't get recognized as she knew people were dying for a picture of her, see how she was after the entire world canceled her. 

"We'll leave the car parked here, the flower shop is just around the corner." Louise pulled from Y/n's hand to make her walk faster. There weren't a lot of people on the streets and she was grateful for that, she hasn't gotten a proper walk in what felt like ages. 

They stopped outside a modern-looking building with a big, bright sign that read 'The Blossom House'. It was simple yet cute. The pair stepped in and a little bell ringed. Y/n looked around, admiring how everything looked like it was straight out of a fairytale. There were little pots hanging from the ceiling and she looked up, she saw the ceiling was pure glass, which made the whole place brighter. Flowers weren't really her thing as she could barely keep them alive, but seeing this amount of flowers all in the same place... made her somewhat happy and warm inside. 

She was so deep in thought she didn't even realize her mom left her and was nowhere to be found. It doesn't look like it from outside, but the shop was actually big and very spacious. It was also empty right now, not even an employee was around, so she decided to have a look on her own. It looked like they had all kinds of flowers in here, which made her even more excited because that meant they had-

"Azaleas? They're also my favorites." A deep voice interrupted her thoughts. She jumped on her place as she wasn't expecting it, which made the person behind her chuckle. "I didn't mean to scare you, sorry."

"It's okay..." She turned around and it was fair to say that was she saw stunned her right away.

In front of her, a gorgeous looking man was standing there with a bright smile on his face. She noticed the two dimples poking at each side of his face, making his smile even more beautiful. His emerald green eyes were the greenest eyes she has ever seen in her life, she believed. He had crinkles by his eyes due to his smile being wide. But to her, the icing of the cake was the beautiful mop of chocolate curls he had on the top of his head. She suddenly felt the insane urge to run her hands through it just to see if they were as soft as they looked. 

"Harry, darling!" Louise appeared out of nowhere and wrapped her arms around the man, who only chuckled while reciprocating the greeting.

"Hello, Louise. What's it gonna be today? Tulips? More daisies?" Oh God, he's British. Y/n thought to herself. 

"Gosh, you know me so well. I'm actually here just to look around, I see you found my daughter though." She smirked.

"I surely did. I'm Harry, nice to meet you, love." He offered her a hand for her to shake.

Y/n was a little surprised by the pet name but took his hand nonetheless. "I'm Y/n, nice to meet you too."

"I want her to get some plants for her house." Louise spoke again.

"Well, you're in the right place then." He said. "Do you want them for your garden?"

"No, uhm... I don't have one. I live in an apartment."

"Personally, my favorite to keep indoors are Begonias." Harry guided the two women to a different section of the flower shop and pointed to some pretty ones in pink color. "But I also enjoy Daylilies, although they're a little harder to maintain."

"Yeah, maybe not those then. I'm not very good at keeping plants alive."

"She killed a cactus once." Louise mentioned. 

"No way." 

"I didn't know they'd drown if I watered them more than once a week!" Y/n defended herself. 

"Amateur mistake." He joked. 

The truth was Y/n was too busy to have a garden, she was always traveling and didn't stay too long in one place so even if she tries to have one, it'd be dead by the end of the month. 

"What plants are cat friendly? I have two at home."

"Bromeliads are cat friendly, they're easy to maintain too."

They looked around for a little bit. Harry said a fun fact about every type of flower Y/n pointed out, never failing to make her laugh. The funny thing was, it didn't look like Harry knew who she was. Either he hasn't recognized her, or he didn't know about her. Which by the way, not to be a narcissist, would be highly unlikely.

She ended up taking a couple of new plants home, starting to grow excited about them. It was true, her apartment could use a little more life to it, and now she was sure her new plants would do that for her. Harry was wrapping everything for them while he stood behind the counter.

"Oh, here. This one's on the house." Harry handed her a pot with some beautiful blue Azaleas. She took them with a growing blush on her face, a blush that went deeper when their hands brushed with each other. "Try to not kill them though." He teased.

Y/n rolled her eyes as her mom chuckled behind her. "I'll report their aliveness back to you, you'll see."

"You better. Have a nice day, ladies. I'm guessing I'll see you around, Y/n?"

"Sure, I'm uh... I'm living here right now."

Harry smiled at them one last time before they exited the shop. After the door closed behind them, Louise turned to Y/n. "He likes you."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"What do you say if we invite him for dinner sometime?"

"Like, at your house?" She asked surprised.

"Yeah, why not?"

"I have to keep a low profile, mother. For all I know he could be tweeting about I just exited his shop."

"Don't let the paranoia ruin the possibility of forming new friendships... or more." Louise sent her a wink.

"Okay, that's enough."

Y/n brushed her off, trying not to think much about it. A new friendship sounded impossible at this point of her life, let alone pursuing a new relationship with someone. She had made up her mind, she was better off being alone.

[eruanna1875]

“Hope the stories are cool.”

At the half-murmured words, Ben turned to their source in the passenger seat beside him, brow furrowed. “What was that?”

Riley, staring out the window of Patrick’s weird-smelling car at the night around them, seemed surprised at the question. “Hm?” When he looked at Ben, however, it was clear he hadn't realized he'd said anything aloud until that moment. “Oh! Uh—" He shrugged it off with a nonchalant grin, turning away again. “Uh, nothing. Sorry.”

Oh, you’re not getting off that easy, Ben thought. “What’d you say? What stories?”

Riley rolled his eyes. “Ben—”

“No, no,” he interrupted, before a snide remark could be made, “I heard ‘stories’ and ‘cool’. Now, what cool stories were you talking about?”

Riley gave him perhaps half of a death glare, and for a moment, Ben thought he was going to ignore the question. But then he sulked back against his seat, and seemed to give in. “Well—” He scoffed, eyes on the ceiling. “Ours, I guess. I mean, we just stole the Declaration of Independence, Ben! The Declara—do you have any idea what this means?”

Ben frowned: maybe he was avoiding the question after all. “Yes, I think you've given me several ideas of the things this could possibly mean.” Besides, I thought you’d be worried out at this time of night, he added mentally.

“Yeah, but I'm not talking about going to prison, and Ian shooting us, and Abigail doing a lot more than slapping and shouting if we screw it up. She’ll probably… I dunno, impale us with those pointy heels or something.” He picked up an old neck pillow (he’d knocked it off the seat when he first climbed up front), and put it in his lap. “You know, maybe that’s why the spy chicks in the movies wear them all the time—if you can get used to running around and doing all those acrobatics in them, they can double as a lethal weapon.”

“Well, what are you talking about, then?” Ben pressed before the conversation could get too far off base: Riley could easily and resourcefully use the smallest sidetrack to avoid a topic he didn’t want to talk about. Kid was practically an escape artist.

“I’m talking about America. They're not gonna let us off with a simple little life sentence. They're gonna have us pegged even after we're dead.”

Ben bit back a comment about him watching too many ghost hunter shows, opting for the simpler, “How do you mean?”

Riley turned to fix blue eyes firmly on Ben; eyes that, to his surprise, he now saw were grounded in a gravity greater than worry. “Ben… whether we win or not, we’re gonna be locked up for basically the rest of time. Why?”

He leaned in closer, and spoke with such certainty, Ben had to suppress a shiver.

“Because we’re going to be in all the American history books for basically the rest of time. Do you understand that, Mr. History Buff? Kids are gonna be learning our names in the future. Your name, my name, maybe even her name—and unless something crazy happens, like really crazy, then…” He sighed, and plopped back against the seat. “Then even if we keep the Declaration away from Ian, we're gonna be the ones they remember stealing it.” He looked back up. “You know that, Ben?”

It took a moment for Ben to find the voice to reply. When he did, he let it out with a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, blinking a few times. “Huh, yeah.” He sat back, stunned, as the full weight of it befell him. “Yeah...” he whispered again.

The fact was, he had thought of it. From the moment he determined to undertake the task, he’d been aware of it. But throughout their escapades and machinations, he had kept it as just that—a fact—an awareness at the back of his mind. He hadn’t thought about it. Not until that moment, in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night. Not until Riley decided to be seriously, deeply right.

And… he wanted to tell him that. He wanted to tell Riley just how dead-center his aim had been. He wanted to confess to him the sudden fear it had struck in his heart. But somehow, he couldn’t. What somehow it was, he didn’t know. But it kept his voice from him.

He started to tell himself he just didn’t want to worry him further, especially with the way things were now, but he knew that wasn’t it. Riley was the one who started this particular concern anyway. It wasn’t a matter of trust, either. This was his best friend—Riley knew things about him even his father didn’t know, and Ben would have willingly put his life in his hands. There were times when he’d had to. And there were times that Riley’s life had been in his hands, his alone, and they both knew it. And for all he knew, that could’ve been what stopped him from saying those words.

You’re dead right. We’ll never be forgotten. And it terrifies me.

Ben’s highest hope, even beyond the actual finding of the treasure, had always been to become a part of history. Just like his ancestors. Just like the Founders. Just like the men who had been his heroes since he was a boy. And throughout his adventure, there had been many times when he had thought to himself, you’re continuing that story. This is the same old tale Grandpa told you, but it’s not over. It’s going on, in this exact minute, and you’re the one carrying it now.

The thought had given him purpose, over all those years. But now, he could not help but wonder what his part in that history would be. Would he be a hero, like those men of history, the knights (official or not) that he had always looked up to? Or would he be the one to bring it all down when he failed?

But, whatever the reason, he couldn’t say all that to Riley. He couldn’t say anything at the moment. So the moment was filled with silence instead, a weighty, waiting silence, on the precipice of what tomorrow might bring. The burden of history, both written and as yet unwritten, was for him in that moment almost physical.

“That wasn’t the story I was talking about when you heard me, though.”

The breaking of the silence almost startled him. Ben glanced up at Riley, confused and close to bewildered. For a moment, all he could manage was, “Then… what—what were you…?”

Riley also looked up, and seemed to notice something strange in his hushed tone. “Oh. Sorry.” What was there to apologize for? “It’s just, I accidentally had, like, a lot of thoughts, while you and Abigail were talking. That stuff was part of it, but it wasn’t the main thing.”

He fell silent a moment, but Ben gestured him on, almost insistently. If there was more, even if it was worse, he felt he had to hear it. What could Riley have possibly meant?

Riley hesitated, then looked down and began fidgeting with a loose string on the neck pillow in his lap. “You were telling her the story. About the treasure, and how you got all that history from your grandpa.”

Ben’s ears perked up: anybody talking about his grandfather got his full attention.

“And I got thinking about it, and I just…” He shrugged. “I wondered about, y’know, what if that’s us someday? What if… what if we’re the ones some cool old guy tells his grandkids about? I mean, I know he still might think it’s bad, but at least grandpas and textbooks don’t really tell stories the same way. I assume,” he added, with a glance at Ben for confirmation.

To his own surprise, Ben felt a smile tugging at his lips. Something in that homier view of history—despite the continued possibility of failure—put him more at ease, as if he were still listening to old yarns at his grandfather’s house, slowly losing the fear of the storms outside. The cloud of heaviness that had been on him began to dissipate. Even the night around them seemed less dark.

Ben breathed a chuckle. “No, you’re right. They really don’t.”

“Yeah, so he’d be telling like a grandpa, not like some bored guy in Milwaukee having to crank out school material! Right? And then, like, he says,” and at this, Riley briefly put on the persona of an old man, complete with motions and raspy grandpa voice, “‘Come here, m’boy, let me tell you the story of the Templar Treasure,’ and the kids go huddle up in front of him with those ginormous eyes little kids always have, because apparently the smaller you are the bigger your eyes look, and he tells ‘em the whole thing, right up to where your grandpa told it, and then—and then he tells about us.”

There was a noticeable pause, as if it even took a little of Riley’s breath away. He smiled softly, almost in awe himself. “He tells about us.”

A few seconds passed before he noticed the gap of words, which he immediately jumped over to continue his own tale. “And—and maybe there’ll be this one kid who actually thinks about it and is like, ‘man, this Ben guy was nuts! He just goes, oh let’s steal the Declaration of Independence, and expects everybody to be totally fine with it? How could anybody deal with such a crazy guy?’ And the grandpa would be like, ‘Well, shucks, I always knew you were a smart kid.’”

At this, Ben laughed. Really laughed, clear and from the heart. How in the world could Riley complain and fret about their plans so heavily, and yet paint the future with such lightness that you could laugh at it? All the time he’d known this kid, and he still couldn’t quite understand him. But he didn’t mind. And, for the moment, there seemed nothing to fear. The weight was gone.

But Riley wasn’t finished. “Oh, but you know he'd still get pulled into it, the same way your grandpa pulled you in—the same way you pulled me in—and end up thinking it's the coolest thing ever, of course. I mean, who wouldn't, if they tell it like a Gates tells it? You guys don't skimp on the history stuff, especially family history. That’s what bought my ticket for this whole… train of thought... thing... in the first place, you and Abigail and all your history nerd talk the whole way here.”

Ben reeled back, taking false offense. “Oh, nerd talk, is it?”

“One hundred percent, man, and don’t you forget it. And it’ll still be nerd stuff when you’re the subject boring another average guy like me to sleep in the back of the car.” Riley threw his hands in the air with an air of finality. “And, who knows? Maybe one of those cute little grandkids gets all inspired the same way you did, and wants to go find a treasure and fight bad guys and figure all kind of crazy puzzles, and, heck, probably decides to go be a knight and stuff, just like u—”

He bit his lip, checking himself. But Ben took note of his near-words. Riley quickly continued on a corrected course.

“You. Just like you,” and he shoved his arm with a smirk, “Mister Sir Benjamin Franklin knighted-at-age-eleven Gates. You and all your Templars and Crusaders. ‘Cause I mean, what kid wouldn't think a guy smart enough to steal the Declaration of Independence, and crazy enough or brave enough to try to save it from the bad guys, was totally awesome?”

Ben was unvoiced. All his mouth could manage was a speechless smile, as he looked at his young friend. He felt like he’d just heard a little brother tell him he was his hero. And… maybe, in a way, he had.

But it didn’t take long for Riley to notice the smile. The moment he did, he covered his tracks with a roll of the eyes, hoping to pretend he hadn’t said as much as he had. “Except for the kids who actually have the misfortune to know you, I mean.” And on “know”, he chucked the neck pillow at Ben’s face, nailing him squarely.

“Wha—they have the misfortune?”

“Yeah, you know, studies show, the coolness-craziness ratio really gets skewed over time, especially where little kids are involved.”

Snatching the pillow from where it had fallen, Ben grinned and replied, laughter in his voice. “Well, maybe they should ask you to tell the story, then. You seem to have it pretty well mapped out.”

Riley gave him a look. “If I live to have grandkids, I might. And if that pun was actually intended.”

Noticing suddenly how the thought had come out, Ben considered it. “It is now.”

“Thought so.”

As he studied the young snark, another thought lit up Ben’s mind. One that simply could not be left under a bushel. But he did hide a growing grin behind his hand, as he prepared to speak again.

“But you know,” he mused, acting thoughtful, “I’m a little surprised at you, Riley. I mean, you left out one of the key historical figures involved in the story of the Templar Treasure. And he’s not one I thought you’d forget, either, let me tell you.”

“Oh great, here comes the history lecture.” Riley turned to him, eyes firmly planted on the ceiling just above Ben’s head, looking like a teen braced for a parental scolding. “Fine. Who'd I miss?”

“The other knight.”

At his confused look, Ben leaned back, gesturing with a bit of storytelling flair himself. “Riley Poole: computer genius and sole source of common sense, fellow treasure protector against the forces of evil and Ian Howe.” Then, as Riley gaped, Ben launched into a series of smaller voices (although he barely tried to sound like a child, let alone the three to four he seemed to be acting out). “‘Tell me more about him, Grandpa! Oh, he's such a funny guy, I like his jokes! How ever did he put up with that crazy Ben? That guy couldn’t have got anywhere without Riley!’”

Riley stared at him for a few seconds. But then, to Ben’s surprise, his mouth snapped shut, and the jaw behind it seemed, for a second at least, to clench. “Come on, Ben, not cool,” Riley muttered, jerking his face the other way. “I was serious.”

Ben felt a twinge of guilt at the almost angry reaction: Riley thought he was being mocked. But before he could feel so (mistakenly) betrayed he cut himself off from anything Ben had to say—a situation Ben really, really hated—he settled a hand on Riley’s shoulder. This earned him a rather cross glance. But, seeing past the glare, he looked his young friend dead in the eyes, with a small, sincere smile.

“So was I.”

The glance lengthened into a full-on stare. “Wait, you—”

Ben could see the exact moment that the words fully sank in. The irritation became stunned surprise, and that turned to a swelling, glowing pride. It wasn’t a joke. Ben meant every word. A smile twitched at his lips. Then the swell burst, short and sudden, in a laugh like a firework. “Wow.”

And it pleased Ben mightily to see it. The sight of those blue eyes lighting up with real joy, with no hint of sarcasm, was rare. And he was doubly happy, because he was also telling the truth. Truth in every single word. Including one word in particular. One that required a little testing. Ben paused, taking the moment in a bit longer, then lifted his eyebrows, almost humourously. “Unless, of course, you’d prefer to drop the knight part…”

“No!”

Ben nearly laughed again at the eager speed of the answer. But Riley, upon realizing the same, nearly stumbled over himself to cover up with, “Um, no, no, that’s fine. The knight part… the knight part works. D-don’t worry about it.”

“Who’s worrying?” Ben grinned, hopes fulfilled. Ever since he’d told Riley about his boyhood knighthood (and truth be told, he’d never really dropped the title, at least in his own mind), he’d found it easier and easier to think of the two of them as fellow knights. But he never said that. He didn’t want to push a title on someone else if they might think it a little childish. That was why he’d needed a test, which Riley had passed with eagerness.

And yet, pleased as he was by that eagerness, it suddenly hit him how easily it could be snuffed out. The nearer they got to the treasure, the greater the danger would grow. He was sure of that. They’d already been through some real perils, and they’d escaped without injury, but how long would it be before they wound up in front of Ian’s gun again, with ever-dwindling negotiables? The old weight began to creep back over him.

“You are.”

Ben looked back up, confused. “I’m what?”

“Worrying.”

Is it that noticeable? “Oh. Am I?”

At that, something inside Riley seemed to crumble, something he tried very much to hide. “Oh.”

Ben furrowed his brow, definitely worried now. What happened? Did I say something wrong?

He started to open his mouth to ask, but Riley seemed to steel himself, taking a breath and lifting his head. “Yeah, and you know, I totally get it,” he said, quickly and in something of an apologetic tone, “it’s a personal thing from your childhood, it feels weird letting somebody else take over it. I get it. The knight part is your thing. So if you don’t want me tacking it on,” he raised his hands in surrender, “it’s fine, I won’t say anything else about it.”

“What?” This was it? After all the—he still felt out of place in Ben’s life? He still felt like he was being just a burden, a tagalong?

“What?”

Ben sighed and shook his head. “You’re not taking anything over. Knighthood is meant to be passed from one to another. And it’s too important a promise to tack on to just anybody.”

“Tell that to Jagger.”

“Too important for me to just tack on, then.”

Riley seemed reluctant to accept acceptance, no matter how many times he’d received it. “Really?”

“Trust me. You’re good. That wasn’t even close to what I was worrying about.”

He let out a quiet breath of relief. “Okay.” The pause wasn’t long, however, before he glanced back up. “But you were worrying, though. That was definitely the Ben Gates worry face.”

“I have a worry face?”

“Ehh, it’s rare, but I know it when I see it. I mean, it’s you. Worrying.” Ben conceded the point with a shrug. “So why?”

“Why?” Ben hesitated, taking a breath, but his mind made itself up quickly. No more. Riley had opened up to him; it was high time, however his friend reacted, he did the same. He slowly let out his breath. “Because I think we’re gonna need the knight part pretty soon. We’re probably coming up on some… well, some pretty difficult chapters of that story, if you know what I mean. And, if I’m gonna be honest,” and at this, his voice dropped, “I’m a little afraid to know the ending.”

Riley stared at him for a silent moment. Ben wasn’t quite sure what he was hoping for next. Hope I didn’t say too much. But then Riley nodded, slowly at first. “Wow. Yeah, I mean, me too, man.” His nodding sped up. “You know, maybe I will keep the knight part after all.”

Ben smiled, relieved, though he wasn’t sure why. “Sounds like a good idea.”

“Yeah.” Riley was quiet only a moment more before he scoffed. “You know, it’s all fine when you’re just hearing about the dangerous stuff the heroes go through. You don’t really think about how threats to your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness actually feel.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“But hey,” he shrugged, “at least those future-kids are gonna have a heck of a story. I mean, for them, we’re probably coming up on the best parts!” He laughed at his own words, but still grimaced slightly.

Ben smiled. Again, the complainer held the candle in the dark. And in that moment, Ben knew he was glad to have him on this… adventure, or whatever it could be called, no matter what happened. Riley really had been the common sense, the genius, the light (shaded in sarcasm though it was), throughout the whole thing. And Ben was sure he truly couldn’t have gotten this far without him. But he knew they were about to head off into more trouble when they got to Philadelphia tomorrow, very possibly of the life-threatening type. He had to make sure Riley was okay with facing it down.

“Sure you still wanna be a part of it?” he asked, nodding toward him. “It’s a big responsibility.”

Riley tapped the red, metal, tube-like container hanging on Ben’s seat. “I know.”

Ben nodded. “You’re right. There is a very big responsibility to keep the Declaration safe. We have enough danger just from that. But the duty of the Templars, the Freemasons, and the family Gates, now, that's all on me. Not you or Abigail or anybody else. I know I pretty much dragged you into this from the beginning, and if you’d rather stay out of the line of fire, I… wouldn’t mind letting you—”

“Oh no you don’t, Mr. Gates,” Riley interrupted, grinning widely and pointing threateningly, “you made me a treasure protector, same as all your Templars, Freemasons, and family Gates! And I promise you, I’m not about to let you write me out now!”

That’s a good enough promise for me. Then, attitude restored, Ben responded in a tone of dry humour. “Well, then, in that case, I dub thee Sir Riley.” And he smacked him on the shoulder with the neck pillow.

Sir Riley seemed to take offense to the smacking as a personal challenge, and snatched the pillow away. Ben could see a glint of war fire in his eye. However, before battle could be engaged, his eye caught a sight that was becoming pleasantly familiar, to him at least. He laughingly held up a hand.

“Okay, hold up, hold up, Abigail’s coming back.”

“Oh joy,” Riley deadpanned, a little disappointed in the forced ceasefire. Then, with a thought, he smirked at Ben. “You think even she’d be okay in a story? Like as a character?”

“Abigail?” Ben considered her qualifications for such a role. And he found he couldn’t help but smile; smile at her deep passion for history (close akin to his own), her unflagging determination, and of course, her absolute refusal to ever shut up. “Could be.” He chuckled softly. “Could be…”

He looked up to find Riley giving him a very pointed look, so Ben ignored him and glanced out at her instead. As Abigail crossed the parking lot, he pondered her a little longer. “Wonder if she thinks we're the heroes or the villains.”

By the time he noticed Riley’s movement, the window was already halfway rolled down. “Good question.” Riley stuck his head out the window and yelled across the parking lot, “Hey, Abi, do you think we're the heroes or the villains?”

Still halfway across, she stopped to give him a look and shook her head. “It’s Abigail to you, and for the record, I still think you’re lunatics.”

“Well, I knew that!”

“I mean for yelling across the parking lot.”

“Well, if we're stating things for the record, you're yelling too.”

Abigail simply rolled her eyes and resumed her walk. Riley laughed again. “Guess we’re gonna have to call off the Second Revolutionary War, huh, Ben?”

“Oh, you’ll probably break the truce at some point.”

“Keep on your toes, old man.”

Riley smiled, but fell silent as he did so, staring at the dashboard. In the moment before Abigail came up to the car, his voice returned. “So… just to be clear…” He took a breath before he spoke again, and looked up at Ben hopefully when he did. “Knights?”

Ben practically beamed as he nodded: he could finally say it was true. “Knights.”

Riley held up his fist, and they sealed their eternal covenant of knighthood and brotherhood with a knuckle-bump.

A moment later, the passenger door opened. “Also, you took my seat, Bill.”

“Sir Riley, actually. Nice to meet you, milady.”

---

Well, happy Independence Day, folks! Thanks for reading, and doubly so if you've stuck with me all the way through to the end here!

This is my first National Treasure fic, but my second Lord of the Rings fic (the first is ancient and in hiding somewhere). Since NT is so patriotic and honoring of America's history and forefathers, I figured I'd post this today.

The inspiration came from two things: firstly, that fanfiction I posted about a few weeks ago, and secondly, from the story scene in The Two Towers. The kids had the movie on, and I jumped in right around there. And maybe I just had NT on the brain, but that scene just suddenly struck me as very fitting for Ben and Riley. Who are awesome, by the way.

So I wrote up a (much shorter) first draft that day, and edited it over the next several weeks. And now it's done! And I'm rather pleased with it, for my part.

It's also on fanfiction.net and, for the first time for any of my fics, AO3, if you want to check that out too.

Again, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and happy Independence Day!

[shra-vasti]

Pretty U

Pairing : Xu Minghao x reader

Type : Soulmate au, idol au

Genre : fluff

Warnings : none

Word count : 3-4k approx

Soulmate au type : In which a person is born with a tattoo of a flower bud, when a person first has any sort of physical touch with their soulmate, it will bloom into a flower which represents their soulmate's personality briefly.

You were like an enigma, for Minghao at least. The way you performed, the way you subtly flirt with the audience, he wonders how you even do that. Whenever he watches you perform or even get a glimpse of you, it's enough for him to get stuck with the thoughts of you for a long time. He feels like he knows you, that you may have been someone from his far past or even an erased memory but the only thing that keeps him from believing those signs is the fact that you two haven't even once introduced yourself properly.

But he has heard about you, a lot. Nothing bad, nothing good. Form what he had heard, you were foxy, wily, sly who knew their way out. He didn't judge you, he never judged anyone maybe except for few of his members but that's the other story. He has no idea where those rumors about you came from, you were rather sweet aside from the rumors.

"Beware pretty boy." a rather euphonic voice warned him. He look up from where he was standing to see you standing in front of him rather closely. He backed off, shook by the proximity of the two of you. You laughed at his startled self, you hands behind your back as you shook your head.

He look cute like that. You saw him zoning out right in the middle of the bighit building, a little idea plopping in your head as you head towards him.

"I'm sorry." he bowed unable to hide his embarrassment. He heard you laugh again as you once again made your way towards him patting his shoulder and mumbling a sweet bye and exiting with a wink.

He stood there still frozen, did you perhaps flirt with him? He could feel his heart beating loudly as he patted his hand over it trying to calm it down. He didn't know why he felt such strong emotions when you came near him, maybe he just wasn't prepared.

He turned around abruptly, looking in the direction you went and kept looking till you were out of sight. Did you have such impact on each and every person you met? No wonder there were a hell lot of people who admired you, girls and boys combined. There was just something mysterious about you and he would be lying if he said it didn't attract him.

The sound of his phone going off pulled him out of his thoughts as he pull his phone out of his pocket. Jung Haeun, he picked up the phone informing her that he'll be at her house in 10 minutes as he started walking out of the building.

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"Are you really planning of leaving Korea so abruptly?"

Minghao was seated on the couch as he eyed Haeun's packed belongings. He felt his heart getting heavier as the seconds passed by. His thorat felt dry as he tried to reason everything out with her. If only Joshua and her would have listen to him first, things would have been far better.

"Sorry Hao, but you know I loved Joshua too much and it will be best for me if I get as away from him as possible. I'm going back home and start a new life. It's for my well being. Although I'm happy for him, I can't just let my heart break over and over again."

Minghao clenched his fist and closed his eyes momentarily. He inhaled and exhaled deeply trying his best to suppress his emotions. Haeun was someone really dear to him and it pained him watching her heart getting broke time and again. He wanted to blame someone but he couldn't. He knew feelings can't be controlled, he knew Joshua was going to find his soulmate eventually but he didn't think about Haeun leaving him just like that.

It was for her better, he kept repeating that to himself. He wanted to laugh at himself, how Joshua managed to meet Haeun through him and became more important to Haeun still a blur to him. Maybe the romantic love between two people was much stronger than the platonic love he shared with her from years but that didn't hurt less when she didn't even consider his feelings and took a decision.

He knew she was hurt and maybe it was better for her but now who was he going to go to when he felt down and neglected. She was the only one aside from his members he was closed too. How was he supposed to get used to her not being around him anymore. He lost his best friend just like that.

"Here's your coffee." Haeun smiled at him as she sat beside him and Minghao adjusted himself so that he was facing her. He reached towards her and held the cup as Haeun eyed his wrist, the tattoo on Minghao's wrist which was once a small bud blossomed into a beautiful dahlia. She internally smiled feeling happy for him finally meeting his soulmate, but getting confused as to why he didn't tell her.

"Thanks." he mummered taking a sip of the coffee. He drank it in one go, getting surprised by the sharp gaze Haeun had set on him. He gulped trying to figure her out before huffing.

"What?"

"So you are trying to tell me that you are too busy to even tell me about what's going on your life now?" her question was sudden, but her playful aura and small smirk gave off that it wasn't something very serious.

"What are you talking about?"

"Why didn't you tell me you found your soulmate?" she pouted looking at him. Minghao furrowed his eyebrows, his eyes unconsciously landing on his wrist where the bud tattoo was located only for them to widened. His brought his wrist closer to his face examine the newly bloomed flower.

"I....I don't know." his voice was a mere whisper, his mind wondering in so many different directions. Did he bumped into someone one the way? No he didn't.

"You don't know? Did you not know when the bud bloom into a flower when it was right on your wrist? You got to be kidding me." Haeun exclaimed, her eyes narrowing in his direction in a criticising way. She couldn't believe he was so naive to miss the formation of bond.

"God I can't remember." he pinched his eyebrows together then shaking his head violently. He never really made any effort to find his soulmate. He believed fate will find its way but that didn't mean he wasn't excited about the idea of meeting his soulmate and now he just crossed the chance with fate.

"It's okay hao I'm sure if not you, they will find their way towards you. Chill." She smiled at him sympathetically but bursting into fits of giggles soon.

"Let me drop you off." He got up pouting in her direction giving her a side glare as he got her luggage and exit her apartment with her following behind.

He dropped her off the airport, helped her with luggage and bid her goodbye with a bitter smile.

"I'll miss you." he said as he hugged her for the last time.

"We will see each other soon. I'll come to visit you sometime till that time try to remember something about your soulmate okay?" she replied breaking the hug. She patted his shoulder and winked in his direction before making her way towards the flight.

A sudden realization hit him at Haeun's gesture. You had touched him the same way Haeun did and it was so lame of him to forget about someone who lives in his mind majority of the time. He faceplamed himself before looking towards Haeun watching her flight take off.

He felt empty, her family was going to be really happy knowing she came back for good. He hoped with a sincere heart that she find her love. She deserved it. He just cursed fate for being so cruel with her but now he had something else on his mind, you. What were the chances of you being his soulmate again?

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Your eyes were trained on your wrist where a beautiful cosmos flower was bloomed, a small smile was splayed across your lips as you trailed it with your other hands. Cosmos, the flower that represents peace and tranquility. You exhaled as your mind wondered towards Minghao, you were too shy to spin around and run towards him exclaiming to watch his wrist plus you didn't want everyone else present in the building to know your business.

You never knew why people were interested in others life so much. Why they wanted to know everything about one's life. You get that being an idol you kind of sign up for it, well for the fans and netizens as it is but not the fellow idols at least. Idol life was a mess in idol industry but it seem really perfect in the eyes of netizens.

You kept your personal and idol life separated even from your fellow idols except for a few close ones who knew you from a long time or some people who you have taken a liking of. It led for every other person to have a wild guess on your life. Sometimes the rumours entertain you other times they gave you headaches but nonetheless it's fun to see everyone else getting worked up to figure you out.

You liked it, you prefer it that way. How people presumed you have countless of affairs, maybe with some of the CEOs of the big companies too but none of them had confirmation and that itself was satisfactory. You liked the attention you were getting, either way there were many people who admired you for your work as well as your exterior.

You wondered what Minghao thinks of you, if he judges you the way other do or if he thinks you are too good to date like others do. You shook your head, from what you have heard and from what you have seen, he wasn't the type to judge someone easily.

You made your way towards the building where the party was being held for celebrating and welcoming the artist of pledis, source music and your company under bighit. You were nervous but ecstatic at the same time.

"Cheers to everyone attending this party." the host exclaimed as soon as you grab the glass of your drink, you held it high laughing alongside everyone in the room and taking a glup.

The party was great, you talked with many idols and producers in order to strengthen your connections in the industry. Everything was great except that Seventeen was no where to be found, how were you going to approach Minghao if he was no where to be found.

"I hope you are having fun labelmate." his voice startled you, you didn't imagine him approaching you first that too as soon as the event started. You turn around a little too early for your liking making him raise his eyebrows as he giggled.

You scratch the back of your ear before nodding slowly, you weren't supposed to be this shy. You aren't known to be this timid. You recklessly blamed it on the soulmate bond.

"Where were you?" you asked even before you could think, he smiled as he reached forward to grab the drink from your hand, taking a sip and putting it aside.

"Just had to drop someone off so I was kind of late hence making the members wait for me and collectively getting late at the party." he stated as he looked in the direction where his members were standing. You followed his gaze, your eyes landing on the rest of Seventeen some of them laughing, some smirking and some trying their best to not look in your direction. Minghao gave them a look and they quickly turned around the other way.

"So you know?" you asked him motioning him towards your wrist which was now covered with a skin tape. He nodded, a big smile plastering on his face wanting to just hug you but not when you were in public like this.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked referring to the time when you could have stopped him and tell him about the soulmate bond.

"I figured that too late." you replied not wanting to sound too timid in front of him. He nodded at you telling you he will meet you  after the party alone where you could just talk about yourself more privately. You bid him goodbye as he made his way towards his members.

You turn around wanting to grab another drink when your eyes landed on bunch of people eyeing you and gossiping. You sighed internally, you generally never minded this when you used to get caught up in false dating rumours but were they going to judge you for finding your mate too?

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"I'll go use the bathroom." Minghao excused himself as he made his way towards the restroom. He was happy, a little eager for this party to end. He wanted to hold you, tell you about how much you occupied his mind even when he didn't know you were his soulmate.

His eyes never left you and neither did yours. He was happy with this little game of stealing glances when no one was looking, or everyone was looking but he didn't know. You never understand anything fully till you experience it yourself and Minghao could confirm this saying. When Seokmin, Soonyoung and Joshua would gush about their soulmates and their love he used to cringe, finding it too lovey dovey for boys of their age but the prominent butterflies he felt when you smiled at him was something he wanna experience forever.

He was afraid that he was too plain for you, too simple, too boring that you would reject him the moment he step in front of you but he was happy to see you looking out for him. At first he thought you just hated the idea of being soulmate with him and didn't approach him but he figured you were shy. A little thing about you which he involuntarily learned.

He got out of the restroom feeling relieved, he didn't drink more than a glass but he rather had too many soft drinks. He fixed his blazer smiling at his senior who was heading in his direction but before he could pass her she stopped in front of him.

"Are you enjoying your time here?" Kim Sejung, a soloist who debuted the few years prior to him asked.

"Very much." he replied his eyes taking a look at the main hall where the party was going on to have a look at you.

"I hope we can collaborate anytime soon in the future. Your team is really amazing and you guys deserve your success." She said as she complimented him for maintaining his idol image really well. He smiled at her bowing towards her, thanking her for her kind words.

"But as you can see I'm your senior and have been in this industry longer so I suggest you to stay away from sly people who run behind you just because you are famous. Precaution is better than cure, don't want you getting hurt." her smile was bitter as she indirectly taunt him to stay away from you.

Her words caught him off guard, who was she to tell him about his life? He didn't wanted to sound rude so he just thanked her and made his way towards his members. He never understood what was wrong with people's mentality, or why did they care so much about other people's business.

This wasn't the first warning he had got the whole night, he had his fair share of unwanted advice from his fellow idols, mainly female idols spluttering shit about you having multiple affairs simultaneously and male idols about you trying to trap him as your prey to live off his stardom. Although you were his junior, you were comparatively doing well with your career, you didn't need him for that.

The members were getting more concerned about him as they could see his usually composed demenor cracking up little by little. It didn't go unnoticed by you. You saw all of the people going towards him to warn about you. You didn't even know what was wrong with you talking with him. Then again people don't know how to keep their nose off of others business. It pained you looking at him getting annoyed as the time passed, maybe he will get tired of it and not see you, the thought pained you but you didn't know what do to. You weren't going to let people ruin your relationship with him even before forming it.

You made your way out of the main hall towards the backyard which had a garden. You went towards it taking off your heels and keeping it aside as you made yourself comfortable on a cold bench. A sigh left your lips forming a cloud, you should have brought your coat along with you as you came outside. Outside was far more chill than the hall inside.

Your thoughts went back towards the hall, sometimes you wish you debuted in a girl group, at least you would have shoulders to lean on at such times. You never let the rumours break you but those rumours potentially creating a gap between you and your soulmate made you uneasy. Your eyes filled with tears as you breathed in and out to calm yourself.

Suddenly the chillness of the surrounding subsidised, you look down at yourself touching the warm fabric that was now protecting you from the chill breeze. You look up, immediately standing up on your feet to come face to face with Minghao. He stepped closer as you look down at your feet to hide your tears away from him. This wasn't how you were planning the after party would go.

He hooked his index finger on your chin and brought your face up, he leaned closer concern laced on his face as he wipe the tears with his hands.

"What are you crying about?" his voice was barely above a whisper due to your close proximity, his breath hitting your face as he spoke. "Why didn't you bring your coat with you it's cold in here."

"I'm sorry." you said as you tried your best to look anywhere but him. He encircled his arms around you, bringing you closer to his body immediately making you feel more warm as your hands rested on his chest.

"Look at me." and you did. "I don't care what others say, I am not annoyed at you. I just hate the fact that you allow people to talk shit about you." he continued as he cupped your cheeks kissing your nose gently. You closed your eyes relaxing in his embrace.

"It's better that way." you opened your eyes looking at him, he tilt his head at you. "The false rumors, it kind of helps me, otherwise the company would force me to date an idol for publicity and I don't want to be with anyone else but you. I wanted to be with my soulmate and I didn't want to court anyone else but you."

You nuzzled your face at the crook of his neck, your cheeks and ears getting red due to your sudden confession but it felt right to tell him those things. You inhaled his scent, your smile widenening at the feeling of his heart beating rapidly in his chest. You stayed like that for a while, in each other's arms as he rubbed random pattern on your back.

"You don't have to force yourself to be with be because of our bond you know? There's going to be a time when you will feel overwhelmed with the amount of gossip and rumors about me. I don't want you to get hurt." you replied as you wrapped both of your arms around his waist too afraid to let go as if he would disappear.

"I don't care." he sighed softly kissing your temple before tucking your head back at the crook of his neck. "I don't care what others say as long as you are with me. It will hurt me to listen something which I know will hurt you but they are just rumors, they will die down. And I'll be by your side forever."

If anything Minghao was sure of was his determination to protect you and you wanted nothing but him to believe in you and your bond. You kissed his neck as you hugged him more tightly.

"Can you kiss me?" and so he grabbed the collar of his blazer which was draped on your shoulder and pulled you again him as he kissed you again and again till you forgot everything else but him.

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"I want to pick and gather all the pretty words for you. They stick in my throat in front of you. I promise myself, while drinking a glass of water in the morning, to tell you. I will confess what has been on the tip of my tongue tomorrow, You are pretty.''

[mrmercer13]

Making New Friends - a Manticore Story

Hi all, this is my entry for day 2 of the DMC OC week. Story below the cut.

Lady stood in front of the old hospital, where her mission was supposed to take place. She looked up at it, trying to  get a glimpse through the windows, but it was too dark to make anything out. No surprises there: the place had been abandoned years ago, and only now had some crazy rich guy decided it was worth too much money to be left alone. That was what she was here for, but it wasn’t that simple. Apparently her employer didn’t want to take any risks on this job and had hired a second devil hunter to help out. Lady was tempted to just go in and blow the demons away herself, but her employer had insisted that the two go in as a pair and the reward being offered was too big to risk pissing him off. So she waited, and moments turned to minutes. She’d been waiting there a quarter of an hour before a shadow crept over her and she turned around to see the largest man she’d ever met, burlier than any demon she’d ever come across and unbelievably hairy. Which made the big dumb grin on his face an incredibly bizarre sight.

“Hi! You’re the hunter I’m supposed to be working with, right? Sorry I’m late: I got lost and had to find my way back to somewhere I knew. I’m Leon, what’s your name?” The giant extended a hand and Lady, momentarily stunned by the strange man’s sudden appearance and extreme cheeriness, shook it. “Lady.” She said, after a brief pause. “That’s a fun name, like the dog in that one movie.” “…Sure, whatever. Now come on, we’ve got a job to do.” Lady marched past him and into the hospital, drawing a pistol and switching on the attached tactical light. Leon followed, babbling about how much “fun” the job was going to be and asking inane questions about her. She was used to other devil hunters being cocky, but this was new. This one was…friendly. And dumb. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She tuned out most of it and gave the questions noncommittal answers – though something she couldn’t figure out bothered her when he asked about her rocket launcher – until they found a stairwell and Lady suggested they split up. Lady made her way to the top floor and would check there while Leon would check the ground floor, then they’d meet up in the middle and sweep that floor as a team. Leon agreed and sprinted off, and it was only then that she realised why the rocket launcher comment had bothered her.

“Wait, Leon! Where are your weapons?!” she yelled out, but he had already rounded a corner and didn’t respond. Lady gave an exasperated sigh and walked upstairs: she knew she could take on whatever was here by herself, and if that idiot got himself torn apart it would be his own fault. The guy didn’t even have a light source on him, he was so unprepared. Someone like that was just going to feed whatever demons he came across and make the other hunters’ jobs harder.

The top floor was swarming with demons. They looked a lot like the Hell Prides she and Dante had fought during the Temen-Ni-Gru incident a couple of years ago, but they were taller and seemed to hold themselves steadier: Lady supposed they must have been training themselves after the two kicked their asses so hard back then. Not that they were much trickier to take out: a hail of gunfire tore through them like paper, without any need for Kalina Ann. In just a few minutes she’d cleared out the floor and counted up the red orbs of the fallen demons: she’d need a clear number to figure out how much she was getting paid. She counted fifty demons worth of orbs, a worryingly large amount. It meant there was a commander of some kind nearby, making the place a hotbed of demonic activity: if she wanted the place cleared out, she’d have to take out that commander. It was a shame about Leon, but there was no way an unarmed man could take on something like that. It was as she reached the stairs, however, that she heard a bestial roar from below.

Lady sprinted down the stairs to find the source of the roar. She came down to a large empty ward on the ground floor and saw a pair of vicious-looking demons. One was a lanky skeletal figure with purple tendrils sprawling across its body, holding a pair of what looked to be scythe blades. It was kind of like a Hell Vanguard, but it seemed like they had been training too. She guessed this was the commander. The other, however, was something she hadn’t seen before. It was some kind of massive leonine humanoid, with great wings, horns and a scorpion tail. One of the commander’s blades was embedded in the beast’s chest, which was covered in glowing golden scars.

The lion-thing seemed to laugh – Lady caught a glimpse of row upon row of razor-sharp teeth – before rearing back and slamming into the commander with its horns. This appeared to stun its adversary, which stumbled back as the lion drew back a fist and slammed it forward, the fist seeming to encase itself in rock as it slammed into the commander. The commander flew backward, the tendrils around the blade in its enemy’s chest snapping free as it was launched into the wall behind it.

The commander got back up, the tendrils and blade regrowing, but the lion had already pulled the blade from its chest and was on all-fours now, launching itself towards the commander and laying into it with claws that shone with brilliant light, leaving trails of radiance in the air behind them. The beast slashed and mauled, dodging all incoming blades with lightning-fast reflexes, before it resumed a bipedal position and took what looked to be a genuine combat stance, the kind you’d see a martial artist take. It threw expert punches and kicks, not quite as fast as when it was on all-fours or as strong as when it was impaled on the blade, but with a level of precision and skill that showed that this demon was more than just some raging animal. It struck the softest parts of the commander’s body, winding it and leaving it vulnerable, before lancing forward with its tail and striking the commander in the chest. The stinger at the end of the tail seemed to pulse outward with golden demonic energy, blasting through the commander’s chest and leaving it to fall to the ground and crumble into orbs.

It was then that she saw something unexpected. The lion demon, this ferocious monstrosity that she had just seen demolish a demon commander, started to cheer and dance with joy. “Yeah, I did it! I’m the best!” she heard it yell, and though the voice was distorted and growling, she could still recognise it as the one that had been asking her all those questions just a few minutes ago. Sure enough, there was a golden flash and there stood Leon, that same idiotic grin on his face and looking none the worse for wear. She put a hand to the shotgun at her side, but paused. This was a demon: just a couple of years ago she’d have put a gun shop’s worth of buckshot in his skull without a second thought. But this wasn’t a couple of years ago: her time in Temen-Ni-Gru had shown her that even demons had the potential to be kind, and this one certainly didn’t look like he was planning to hurt any innocents any time soon. Hell, he was taking down monsters that would put innocents in danger. So she stepped away before Leon could see her and went back to the stairs, pretending that she had just gotten there when Leon arrived. She said nothing about what she had seen, just checked that he was okay and carried on with the mission.

There were only a few demons on the middle floor: the pair wiped them out in no time at all. Leon was quieter than before, but still seemed happy as ever as they headed back out and went to report their success. As they were walking, Leon spoke up. “Thanks for not shooting me back there.” Lady stopped, surprised. “Wait, you knew I was there?” Leon shrugged. “I smelled a human nearby, figured it was you.” A pause. “Wait, that was you, right?” Lady couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Yes, that was me. Look, I misjudged you earlier: it’s clear now that you know what you’re doing. I still wish you’d take the job a little more seriously, but it’s not like you’re the only one who doesn’t. I guess I just want to say I’m sorry for being so dismissive earlier.” Leon let out a deep, bellowing laugh. “You don’t have to apologise for anything! We’ve already bonded over fighting demons: that means we’re friends now!” Lady smiled at that. “If you say so. Hey, thinking of friends I do know another hunter who’s also a demon. Well, half demon, but I figure you guys might have something in common. Head down to Devil May Cry some time: he could do with the company.” Leon’s face lit up even more than normal. “Yeah, that sounds great! It’ll be so much fun, like…like...like something that’s really fun!“ Lady smiled to herself as Leon started rattling off ideas for fun activities they could do together. Well, why not? Dante could get pretty lonely sometimes, even if he wouldn’t admit it. Meeting someone that cheery might be good for him. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful: they reported their success, got their pay and went home. Lady still didn’t know this Leon guy too well, but she was pretty sure that people would be a lot safer with him around.

Author’s note: Manticore got lost on the way to visiting Dante and ended up at Devil May Fry, a poorly-named fried chicken place on the other side of town. He never did end up meeting Dante, but the chicken was nice at least.

[skrltwtch]

Muse

Prompt 1: Just like some people sleep-walk, you tend to paint or draw while in your transformed state because it calms you down. And apparently, people really like your art.

Prompt 2: A is a popular artist, and B messages them without thinking one day. They didn’t expect to become friends, and they definitely didn’t expect to become more. Person B just felt that connection between the two of them.

Prompt 3: A/Werewolf has a tendency to curl like a dog in front of the fireplace a lot (usually in their werewolf form, but it’s not uncommon for them to do it as a human). (Sources in master list)

Word count: 3,721 words

Genre: Fluff, romance, supernatural

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I put up with the long commute to and fro between home and work for two reasons, and two reasons alone: the decent rent for a place with a picturesque view and that catered to my monthly needs, and the glut of time to catch up on my reading. And by ‘reading’, I meant ‘scrolling through the handful of social media feeds that survived my latest cull of shit that was taking up my time and storage space unnecessarily, and occasionally attempting (and failing) to pay attention to my Kindle’. Hey, at least I was aware I had a problem …?

Instagram was my first hit of the day. I flicked past images of makeup, friends in situations I wouldn’t be finding myself in anytime soon, and cute animals. The occasional meme and comic draw out an exhalation of air from my nostrils. I marvelled at artwork and photography, half wishing I were half as good as the people I followed and admired, half chiding myself for not practising either enough and losing interest quicker than I’d dropped money on new equipment in the name of my new endeavours. You could say one of my hobbies, the ones I’d been consistent about, was amassing gadgets obtained to indulge my whims and fancies.

My heart skipped a beat — or was it the pothole the bus went over? — when I came across a new post by George. I didn’t know him personally to refer to him by his first name like that, but hadn’t social media broken down boundaries between people, making them seem closer to each other than they really were? He was an illustrator whose work I chanced upon on Reddit a while back. His portfolio was a patchwork of subjects, often portraits, rendered mostly in traditional media like watercolour and oil paint. He sometimes shook things up with abstract, contemplative pieces. He had something for almost everyone. For me, it was his attractive, angular yet distinctive faces and statuesque figures, use of watercolour, and versatility: one piece could be superhero fanart, followed by a collection of moody, atmospheric paintings of the English landscape with some fantastical additions.

It also helped that he seemed to be a nice, chill person, and a handsome one at that, too, based on the smattering of pictures he had of himself on his feed. Please, let me imagine a world in which someone as ideal as him — or what I knew about him — wasn’t beholden to anyone for a moment.

His latest post was a drippy bust of a snarling wolf with full moons for eyes. The caption simply read: ‘Mood.’ I smirked as I hit the like button. Did I mention that he drew wolves a lot as well? Sometimes his wolves were feral; sometimes they were humanoid, but still wild. The latter featured heavily in his conceptual works, albeit as hazy, indistinct forms, like blurry photographs. In any case, I liked that he had a fondness for wolves and werewolves, as the constant presence of the full moon in art of the latter would suggest. Anyone who liked wolves was a-okay in my book. Anyone who liked werewolves was even more so. Because.

An interrupted connection between my brain and my reflexes led me to visit his profile. Instead of returning to my feed, my thumb gravitated toward the message button at the top of the screen. Not a single cell in my body resisted this turn of events despite the restored connection. Oh, what the hell. Why not? Like, what were the chances he’d read my message? He had tens of thousands of followers, a likely considerable chunk of them being bots aside. He must receive DMs every other minute. I’d be another sycophant in his sea of fans. Or he’d see my homely mug and locked profile, and he’d think I was driven to add to his never-ending count of unread messages simply out of misguided thirst.

The beauty of the Internet was that it made ‘out of sight, out of mind’ fairly easy to put into practice.

I got the following out of my system and into his inbox: ’Hi! Hope you’re doing well. I’ve been following your Instagram for a while, and your latest post just made me want to say your art is amazing. (I can totally identify with the sentiment behind it.) I especially love your more abstract pieces. There’s something so … raw about them. And I like that you seem to like wolves a lot, too. They’re beautiful animals, and your art really captures that about them. Anyway, keep up the great work! Take care.’

I exited Instagram, not caring about the rest of my feed anymore and not wanting to feel like I was stalking my notifications for something that’d never come. My phone buzzed with several notifications as I went down my Reddit homepage. I swiped away the banners with green icons that pelted the top of my screen. Those could wait. What couldn’t were the banners stating that I had a new message and a new follower request from —

‘Oh, my God!’ I said, loudly enough for me to hear my own voice above my music (the chorus of Walk the Moon’s ‘Shut Up and Dance’ at half of maximum volume, so … loud). Not one soul on this lightly populated bus acknowledged my exclamation — not even the woman sitting next to me. (Come on, lady, the front was mostly empty.) Thank God for technology making hermits of us all. Or my sudden outburst paled in comparison to the shit that could happen and had happened on public transport. When you took long journeys as I did every day, you’d see some real shit in due time, too.

I launched Instagram for the second time this morning (stop judging, Screen Time) and the first time ever with trembling hands. The notifications were real. I approved his request first. My mind raced to recollect anything on my profile that might make him regret his decision to let my piddling photos of food, myself, my cat, and random junk take up precious space on his feed. Nope, couldn’t think about that now, because I was now staring at an actual, honest-to-God message from George:

’Hey! Thanks for reaching out, and thank you for your kind comments. They mean a lot to me, especially what you said about my experimental stuff and wolves. They are stunning creatures, aren’t they? And yeah, I drew that last picture after a particularly rough night. You could call it a self-portrait of sorts, I suppose.’

I snorted. Change the fur colour and make the eyes normal, and it was a portrait of myself every full moon. Okay, not something I could tell someone I just met, let alone a popular artist on the Internet …

Before I could recover from the shock that my inbox held an actual, honest-to-God message from George Holden (that was his last name — the oxygen made it to my brain for me to remember that he had his last name on his profile), he sent another one: ’Anyway, how are you? I took a look at your profile, and it looks like we have quite a number of things in common.’

What, really? No way. Was it the lashings of sweet treats I subjected my stomach to every weekend? The horror and science fiction titles, celebrity memoirs, and comics, sometimes paired with an iced coffee at either a café I put down roots for the afternoon or the one-bedroom house in Waltham Forest I called home, I showcased to put forth some form of air of intellectualism? The cross-stitch projects featuring memes and popular culture icons? His profile was quite barren of anything that could provide insight into what else he enjoyed doing besides his art. Which, hey, was perfectly fine: no one was obligated to share their personal life online.

I replied, ’I’m fine, thank you. I’m on my way to work. Favourite part of my day, really. And really? Like what?’

Most of my notifications that day were from him.

✦✧✦✧

I was a bustling hub of activity in my seat: A sip of my drink. A shake of my knee. A lift of my phone. A turn of my neck. A shift of my weight from one butt cheek to the other. I was certain I was generating enough electricity to power a lightbulb in five-second intervals. I couldn’t help it. I was so, so excited — and so, so nervous. This was my and George’s first time meeting each other in person. There’d be no screen between us. Actually, what difference would that make? We’d been talking to each other for months, either through text or video calls, the latter more common in the weeks leading up to today. We’d seen each other even on our ‘I’ll put on a clean shirt, brush my hair, and hope for the best’ days. What could either one of us do in person that would irrevocably alter our friendship for the worse? Well …

The sound of someone entering the café stopped me from starting on a list of things that I could do to fuck things up. I looked up, probably the seventh time I did so in the last ten minutes. This was on me. I grossly overestimated the amount of time it’d take me to get somewhere as usual; a natural by-product of living far from the city. Seventh — probably — time was the charm: it was George — and right on the dot, too. His punctuality added to his attractiveness, which had already gone through the roof and was heading straight into the stratosphere. I bit my lip to suppress any unfortunate exclamations. He was a friend, Evelyn … just a friend, and I had no illusions otherwise.

I called out to him. He waved at me and joined me at the table I picked out for us. And the second our eyes met, devoid of any barrier between us, everything about him — and everything about us — clicked.

He was just like me.

And I was just like him.

And he was as astonished about it as I was, going by the long silence that passed between us, a first since we got to know each other.

‘Hi! Oh, my God, it’s so good to finally meet you!’ I said with a grin to break the tension. He broke out into a smile, his posture relaxing. Success. Should I go in for a handshake? No, that’d be too stuffy for a months-old friendship. A hug? No, that’d be too intimate for a months-old friendship, and an online one, too, no less. Was it obvious this was my first time meeting someone I met online?

‘It’s good to meet you, too,’ he said, his expression of cheer unabating. ‘I’m going to get myself a drink first, and then we can shoot the shit.’ His smile turned into a grin. ‘Do you want anything? My treat,’ he added as he spotted me reaching for my wallet.

‘I was thinking a red velvet muffin, please.’ I didn’t know why I didn’t get one earlier. ‘Thank you.’

‘No problem. I’ll be right back.’

As he left, my nerves turned into happiness that I met another werewolf. It was rare to meet other werewolves just about anywhere. What were the odds that two werewolves, one of whom was Internet-famous, would become friends because the other one had a brain fart one morning to send a message to the Internet-famous one? You couldn’t make this shit up. In all the years I’d been a werewolf, George was the first one I knew. I didn’t even know the one that turned me. I got bitten one night, and that was my life changed forever. I figured everything out on my own — I had to. And my puny social network of werewolves made sense: this wasn’t exactly the kind of thing anyone would advertise about themselves.

Once George settled down and courtesies were out of the way, the first thing out of his mouth was ‘I never thought I’d meet another one like me’.

I moved my chair closer to him so that we could speak at length about what we were without the fear of being overheard. ‘Me neither.’ Then it hit me, and I quickly said, ‘It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it, though.’ Personally, I was okay with what I was. No existential dread here, contrary to what one might expect of a werewolf. It happened. I learnt to manage it in a way that made it not have any kind of significant impact on my life. I refused to let it define me. And honestly, I lived for particularly bad days that coincided with full moons.

‘Are you kidding me?’ His face lit up with boyish glee. ‘I’ve been waiting for this day for so long! As in, us meeting up in person for the first time and me getting to know another werewolf. Two birds, one stone: the only kind of killing I endorse. And I’m so fucking chuffed it’s you. I always felt like I could talk to you about anything, and now that really, really means anything.’ It was his turn to be able to power a light bulb, but in twenty-second intervals this time.

‘Same. How were you turned?’

‘I was bitten during a camping trip with friends a couple of years back. You?’

‘Secondary school. I was walking home from the library.’

‘Shit, that was some time ago, huh?’

‘Almost half my life a werewolf.’

‘Do you know the werewolf that did it?’

‘Nope. How about you?’

He shook his head. ‘Nah. Kind of sucks, doesn’t it, that you’ll never get to know the person who’s changed your life so … deeply? They won’t remember either that they turned someone. If only having kids was like that, yeah? Absolutely no sense of responsibility whatsoever.’ He gave his teaspoon a lazy twirl, causing a faint plume of milk to rise and sink into the dark, bittersweet depths from whence it came. ‘I struggled with what I’d become the first couple of months. The transformations were one thing.’ Oh, yeah. ‘I felt … grotesque. God, the amount of self-pity, like, why was I the only one who had to go through this every month when there were four other guys ripe for the picking? So, I decided to start incorporating wolves in my art to get to know and reclaim that part of me. I didn’t want to see it as something ugly. I mean, you get to experience a kind of rebirth every month. That’s extraordinary if you think about it. And I told myself that like myself, the wolf didn’t ask to be born. Ha, ha. Millennial humour. Anyway. Then the most miraculous thing happened one full moon: I woke up next to a coherent painting that wasn’t there the night before.’

‘Oh, my God.’

‘Right? My more artsy stuff? The ones I hate coming up with captions for? Almost all done while I was transformed. I’d started some of my art — bet you can’t guess which one — on full moons, too, and I finished them after I changed back. It’s as if the wolf knew we were now cool with each other.’ He took a big chunk out of his apple crumble and jammed it into his mouth. ‘Sorry if that sounded like spiritual woo-woo. I’ve been wanting to tell someone about this forever.’ Crumbs fell out of his mouth as he spoke. ‘Shit, I’m such an’ — he shot me an impish look as he swallowed — ‘animal, aren’t I? Fuck, I can make stupid references like that now, and someone would get it!’

I laughed. He was such a dork. ‘It’s not “spiritual woo-woo”. It’s amazing. How is that even possible?’

‘I have no idea.’ He held out his hands in front of him. ‘So thankful we get to keep our hands and not have them turn into paws.’ He waggled his thumbs. ‘Fuck, yeah, opposable thumbs. And I want to say it’s like when artists get high and make stuff. I do know artists who do that, and hey, no judgment. To them, I do the same thing, too.’

‘And here I am, feeling accomplished whenever I make it through another full moon without waking up in a trashed place. Seriously, that’s amazing.’

‘I think that’s what’s keeping me from losing it while transformed. I was surprised people liked those pieces when I started posting them, considering they’re such far departures from what I usually post.’

‘That explains why they’re so … visceral.’

‘Yeah? I figure you’d appreciate them even more now.’ He smirked. ‘And you know, no one really talks about my wolf art, and especially my werewolf pieces. Maybe if I didn’t make them blurry and made them more explicit …’ Oh, he’d get a different breed of followers altogether. ‘But that’s fine. I don’t want my lycanthropy to define me and my work. It’s just a part of who I am.’

‘My turn to say something possibly corny: I like your wolf art because … they make me feel seen, because they’re drawn by you.’

He put a hand on his chest. ‘That’s not corny. I’m happy my art makes you feel that way. You know I don’t care about the likes or comments. It just so happens I like drawing things that make me get likes and comments.’ He pushed his plate toward me and motioned at me with his fork to try some of his apple crumble. I obliged him. ‘Did you ever suspect anything? Not that, you know, I purposely drew wolves and werewolves as a kind of signal for other werewolves to pick up on. That’d be giving me way too much credit.’

‘No, I just thought you like wolves a lot.’

‘Same here. What you said about wolves being beautiful creatures when you messaged me the first time … that made me feel something, too.’

‘Then I’m very glad we got to be friends,’ I said. Born from the same blip in brain activity that set us on this path, my hand found itself on top of his. His touch had a pleasant, almost familiar heat to it.

‘Me too.’ He turned his hand over and clasped mine.

‘I have an idea,’ I said, mostly to distract myself from how right this felt. ‘Do you want to meet on the next full moon?’

‘Sure. I can’t wait to see what kind of inspiration will strike with another werewolf around.’

‘Your place, then?’

He nodded. ‘Unless you’re cool with me possibly trashing your place with paint and stuff. That hasn’t happened before, but who knows? What if wolf-me doesn’t like change?’

I stared at him in disbelief.

‘I can’t help it. You have no idea what kind of beast this has unleashed. Oops.’

We sat and talked in the café the entire afternoon; we took turns treating each other to food and drinks to justify our occupancy. Our conversation moved on to other topics besides the one special, biggest thing we had in common. Just like we didn’t want it to define who we were as people, we made a promise to each other, and we did so over a strawberry custard tart, that we wouldn’t let it become the foundation of our friendship from this point on. It’d be unfair to the moments we shared before this. We were friends because we cared about each other, we brought out the best in each other, we could truly be ourselves around each other, and, honestly, I didn’t think anyone else would have the patience for his goofy in-jokes.

✦✧✦✧

I lay in front of the fireplace, rejoicing in the warmth it offered on this cool night, while George was working on his newest painting. Since getting to know each other in these forms, we’d been able to exercise better control. For me, that meant greater peace of mind; for him, that meant a more refined grasp of his artistic sensibilities. As with much about our condition, we didn’t question this. What could possibly be a drawback of us spending more time in each other’s company? I now understood why animals curled up by a fire was a common sight in media and real life, too. Wait, what if this, and not George’s presence, was what I’d been missing all my life?

My tail wagging like a fiend when I felt his breath on my skin begged to differ. I licked his face. He gently parted my lips and slid his tongue onto mine. Our tongues engaged each other in a playful scuffle; the fire crackling in the background could only dream of coming close to causing the rise in temperature in the pit of my stomach. The tussle between our tongues didn’t get to turn into something more: he’d had a long night. I nuzzled him to convey reassurance. He lay down beside me and wrapped his arms around me, his hold firm yet tender. We fell asleep like this, keeping each other warm long even after the fire had died out.

We wished each other a good morning with a kiss — no, two kisses, and we got ourselves ready for the day. As we were having breakfast, George piped up, ‘Do you want to see what I painted last night, love? I’m really proud of it, and I think you’d love it, too.’

I nodded excitedly, my mouth too full of scrambled egg to speak.

He returned as quickly as he’d left the table. His hands held on to a painting … of me curled up by the fire last night. The figure was the clearest, most detailed he’d ever done; the lighting was phenomenal. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, tearing up a little, frankly. ‘I love it. It’s going to look so good in our new place’, along with the recent paintings he’d made of a similar nature. He’d come so far from the gauzy forms that once populated his attempts at capturing his — our — condition on canvas.

‘Of course, when I have the most stunning model.’ He gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘I love you, my muse, my mate.’

[rhosyn-du]

Title: A Wonderful Institution Artist: @bidnezz​ Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, various background pairings Word Count: ~53k Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, discrimination against Downworlders, reference to rape, Clave-typical homophobia, implied character death, minor character death Summary: Magnus doesn’t have time for this bullshit. Warlocks are disappearing in New York City—five people in less than three months—and Magnus is determined to find them and protect the rest of his people from whatever took them. He doesn’t have time for politics, and he certainly doesn’t have time for whatever nonsense the Clave is proposing about marrying a Shadowhunter to a Downworlder as part of the new Accords. He doesn’t really have time for a pretty Shadowhunter who’s surprisingly kind to warlock children, either, but, well, he’s always been good at multitasking.

Alec always knew he couldn’t have what he wanted, but he’s spent the nearly four years since the newly-appointed Consul recalled his parents to Idris without explanation making the best of what he can have. When life suddenly offers up almost everything Alec actually wants on a silver platter, he can’t quite bring himself to trust it, especially when it comes with a million caveats and a side of impending disaster. But he knows how to handle disasters, even if the return of the Circle on top of Clave secrets that could destroy the Accords is way beyond the disasters he’s used to fielding. Hope, on the other hand? He doesn’t know what to do with that.

This fic was created for the @malecdiscordserver​​ Mini Bang 2020.

Chapter Eight

In what was becoming a trend since he’d met Alec Lightwood, Magnus had no fucking clue what he was doing. He’d brought a Shadowhunter to a Downworld party. Granted, it was his Downworld party, and he was supposed to be marrying this Shadowhunter in less than twenty hours, but still. At least he’d had the sense to portal them into his office instead of directly onto the dance floor for his usual dramatic entrance.

Alec didn’t drop his hand even after they stepped through the portal, and Magnus had the sudden urge to pull him down onto the purple velour couch and see if he was interested in picking up where they’d left off with that kiss. Which, he told himself sternly, would be a very bad idea.

Instead, he said, “So. This is my office.” It was, technically, one of several offices. But it was his office at Pandemonium. Smaller than his office at home, but with a great deal more seating.

Beyond the door, he could hear the throbbing of music and sounds of a party already in full swing. Magnus would never admit it aloud, but Ragnor might be almost as good as he was at throwing parties.

“It’s. Um. Very well furnished,” Alec said, eyes taking in the lush couch, pair of high-backed chairs, and wide, modern desk.

“If I have to work, I prefer to do it in comfort,” Magnus told him. “Shall we?”

At Alec’s nod, Magnus led him out of the office and down the hall toward the main floor of the club. When they stepped through the curtain that separated the back of the club from the front, Alec froze. At first, Magnus assumed it was merely shock at the extravagance of the party—Ragnor really had gone all out—but then Alec leaned down to speak in his ear.

“This is your club?” he asked. “Pandemonium?”

There was something in his voice that had Magnus frowning. “Is that a problem?”

“Yeah,” Alec said, licking his lower lip in a nervous gesture that nonetheless sent Magnus’s thoughts wandering to places that were entirely inappropriate at the moment. “Maybe. We caught a Ravener selling mundane blood here last week. The night we ran into Clary.”

Magnus stared at him. “Selling mundane blood? Here? That was the same night a couple Circle members showed their faces here. Do you think they could be connected?”

“I don’t know,” Alec said, running a hand through his hair in obvious irritation. “That was the one objective of our mission, to find out who the demons have been selling the blood to, and I still don’t actually know.”

“Alexander,” Magnus said, squeezing his hand, “you can’t blame yourself for that. There were extenuating circumstances.”

“Oh, I don’t blame myself,” Alec assured him. “The little almost-mundie, on the other hand…”

Magnus sighed. It wasn’t Clarissa’s fault, either, but now was not the time for that particular argument, and anyway, Magnus thought Alec might have a few too many people telling him that already.

“Dance with me,” Magnus said.

“What?” Alec was looking at him like he'd grown a second head.

“Demons and death are problems for another time,” Magnus told him. “Tonight is for celebration. It's my bachelor party, and I want to dance with the most attractive man in the club.”

Alec smiled that bright, unguarded smile that never failed to make something warm bloom in Magnus's chest, but still he shook his head. “I can't dance.”

“Everyone can dance,” Magnus insisted. “You just need someone to teach you the basics.” He looked up at Alec through his lashes. “What do you say, Alexander? Will you let me show you how to move your body?”

This time when Alec’s tongue darted out to wet his lips, Magnus didn't think it was from nerves.

“Okay. Yeah,” Alec agreed. “But don't blame me if I break your toe.”

Laughing, Magnus led him to the dance floor, hands still entwined. Magnus was aware of eyes on them as they moved through the crowd, most curious, but some openly hostile. Even with the looks, it was hard to remember how much of a mistake this probably was when Alec smiled at him.

Ten minutes later, Magnus admitted defeat. Alexander really and truly could not dance. At all. There had thankfully been no broken bones in the attempt, but Magnus thought that was probably due to luck more than anything else.

“I did warn you,” Alec said as he followed Magnus off the dance floor.

“Rest assured, I will take your warnings far more seriously in the future,” Magnus told him. He did not understand how someone who had such precise control of his body in a fight could fail so spectacularly at controlling his movements on the dance floor, but he’d seen it with his own eyes. And he was pretty sure he had a bruise forming on his left shin.

“I think I could use a drink,” Magnus continued. “How about you?”

“I think that sounds less dangerous than dancing,” Alec said.

Before they’d made it halfway to the bar, however, they were interrupted by a dark-haired werewolf. 

“Alaric,” Magnus said in surprise, “I didn’t think this was your kind of party.” 

“It’s not,” Alaric agreed. “I hate to bother you when you’re,” his eyes flickering to Alec, “busy, but I’m here on official business, and I need to speak with you. In private.” 

“Of course,” Magnus said. “Alexander, I’m terribly sorry, but I need to take care of this. Maybe you could grab us those drinks? I’ll only be a minute.” Whatever the business was, he would make it short. 

“Sure,” Alec said, nodding his understanding. “I actually think I saw Cat back that way when we were dancing. I’m going to go say hello.” 

Magnus squeezed Alec’s arm in thanks, then turned back to Alaric. “We can speak in my office.”

Magnus led the way to his office and settled into his chair. It wasn’t unusual for him to deal with Downworld business at Pandemonium—in fact, it was where he took care of a lot of things for people who preferred to keep some discretion about meeting with him—but he really hadn’t anticipated having to do so tonight. When Ragnor planned a party, it was a party, not a place for serious business. 

“Well then,” Magnus said, “would this be pack business or police business?” 

“A little of both,” Alaric said. “We know you’ve been looking into the disappearances of a few warlocks.” 

“Yes,” Magnus said. “I spoke to Lucian about the two who had mundanes file missing persons reports on them with your office.” 

Alaric nodded, sighing. “Luke wanted to talk to you about this then, but we didn’t have leave to tell you until now.” 

Magnus knew he meant leave from their pack Alpha, so he just nodded. 

“The thing is, it’s not just warlocks missing,” Alaric told him. “We’ve had a few wolves go missing, too. Three, to be exact. All with the same MO as your warlocks, absolutely no trace, just gone.” 

Magnus sat back in his chair. That did change things.

“Hmm,” Magnus said. “I don’t know for sure, but I heard from an inside source that the New York vampire clan might be missing a member or two, as well. Camille plays things close to her chest, though, even with her own people, so my source wasn’t able to confirm whether these vampires are actually missing or if Camille is just hiding their whereabouts for some reason.”

“Shit,” Alaric muttered, sucking his teeth. “That’s not what I was hoping to hear. You hear anything about seelies going missing?” 

Magnus shook his head. “No, but the Seelie Queen plays it even closer to the chest than Camille. I wouldn’t expect to hear anything from them.” 

“I’ve got a couple contacts at the seelie court,” Alaric said. “I can check with them, see if they’ll tell me anything.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Magnus said, “but I’ll see what I can find, as well. In the meantime, do you have any information on the wolves who’ve gone missing that you can share? If the same person or people are responsible, we might be able to find a link.”

“I can’t send you everything,” Alaric told him, “but I’ll send you what I can.”

“I’ll do the same,” Magnus promised, “and I’ll try to get more information on the possibly missing vampires from my source.”

“Appreciate it,” Alaric said. “With everything going on, the Circle’s return and those murdered mundanes, Downworlders need to have each other’s backs. I know some people might think you marrying a Shadowhunter means your loyalties are divided now, even if it is just politics, but we’ve worked together often enough I know you’re not about to sell us out to the Clave.”

“I appreciate it,” Magnus said, although he wasn’t sure he did. He’d been aware, distantly, that marrying Alexander would change some people’s opinions of him, but it was one thing to be aware of it in theory and quite another to have it confirmed as a thing that was already happening.

Magnus found Alec with Catarina and Ragnor in the small seating area at the back of the club. It hadn’t been hard to find them, since this was where he and Cat usually sat when they came to Pandemonium together.

“Magnus!” Ragnor greeted. “There you are. You know, your Shadowhunter appreciates my stories far more than you ever do. He should drink with us more often.”

“Don’t believe a word he says about me, Alexander,” Magnus said, slipping onto the couch next to him. “Ragnor has a habit of telling tall tales.”

“So you weren’t actually banned from an entire country?” Alec asked.

“Every good tall tale contains an element of truth,” Magnus said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “And as much as I would love to sit around and listen to you both continue to trash my reputation,” he said to Ragnor and Catarina, “I need to borrow my fiancé for a moment.”

“We hadn’t even gotten to any of the really scandalous parts,” Catarina said, sounding a little disappointed.

“We can save that for next time, though,” Ragnor said. “Now, get along so you can hurry back and actually enjoy your party, Magnus. I didn’t go to this much trouble just to watch you work all night.”

“Is everything all right?” Alec asked as Magnus led him down the back hallway that led to his office.

“The good news,” Magnus said, “is we have more information related to the warlock disappearances.”

“And the bad news?”

Magnus opened the door to his office and gestured Alec inside.

“There are also missing werewolves,” Magnus said. “And possibly missing vampires, although I've known about that for a while.”

“You didn't mention anything about missing vampires,” Alec said, frowning.

“It was shared with me in confidence. The person I got the information from isn’t even sure they’re really missing.”

Alec nodded. “All right. What's our next step?”

“As soon as I have all the information on the missing wolves and possibly missing vampires, we can look for any links,” Magnus said. “Maybe there were some clues left behind from the other disappearances.

“In the meantime,” he continued, “we should try to find out if there have been any seelie disappearances. I hate to ask, especially as busy as I know you are, but Isabelle seemed to imply she might have a contact at the seelie court.”

“She does,” Alec confirmed. “A seelie knight. I'll ask her to do some digging.”

“Thank you, Alexander.”

Alec sighed heavily. “You know, this would be so much easier if we'd just had this information from the start. Shadowhunters protect people from demons. It's what we do. But demons have been snatching Downworlders for months, and no one thought to bring it to us except you.”

“They don't trust the Clave,” Magnus said.

“And you do?”

Magnus shook his head. “I trust you.”

The words hung heavy between them, Alec staring into his eyes as if searching for something. Magnus wondered if he were about to be kissed again.

“Valentine Morgenstern is alive, and the former Consul was working for him.”

It was so far from what Magnus expected that it took several seconds for his brain to catch up.

“I'm sorry, can you repeat that?”

Alec sagged against the wall. “Consul Dieudonné was part of the Circle. He was working for Valentine. His betrayal is why the Clave pushed so hard for the Accords to be updated early, because they knew what would happen if it ever got out.”

“They thought there would be a Downworld revolt,” Magnus surmised.

“And with Valentine alive and the Circle still active, that would be even more of a disaster than it would be at any other time,” Alec agreed. “Not everyone knows—only a few people on the Council, in fact—but that’s why it happened.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Magnus asked. Surely, this wasn't something the Clave wanted getting out.

Alec gave him a tired smile. “Someone once told me trust makes you do strange things.”

“A wise man,” Magnus murmured, still trying to take it all in.

“I get it if this changes things,” Alec said, looking down at his boots. “You were right to be skeptical of this marriage, and I'll understand if you want to back out knowing what you do now.”

It should have been a relief. Magnus had been looking for a way out of this engagement since he'd impulsively stumbled into it, and this gave him an out, one that would probably negate the whole political marriage business entirely if he took it to the other Downworld leaders. He should tell Alexander that he was right, that he did want out.

“How long have you known?”

Alec's head snapped up. “What?”

“How long have you known about this?”

“Almost a week,” Alec said softly. “I should have told you sooner, but I just—”

“This doesn't change anything,” Magnus said.

“How can you say that?” Alec asked. “The Circle managed to infiltrate the highest level of Clave leadership. They could still have agents on the Council.”

“I'm not marrying the Clave, Alexander,” Magnus said, moving to stand next to him. “I'm marrying you.”

Alec watched him with wide eyes, like he was afraid Magnus would take the words back any second.

“You trusted me with this,” Magnus continued. “And nothing you've said changes what I think of you. Or what I think of the Clave for that matter.”

At Alec's puzzled look, he explained, “Ever since the Uprising, I've assumed every Shadowhunter I met was a potential Circle member. You've just confirmed that I was right to be cautious.”

“I don't know how you can think that and still want to marry me.”

“You don't need to understand,” Magnus told him. “Just trust that it's true.”

Alec spent a long moment searching his face, then nodded. “Okay.”

“Good,” Magnus said. “Now come on. If we don't let Ragnor regale you with a few more of his absurd stories before you head back to the Institute, I'll never hear the end of it.”

Despite Ragnor’s insistence that he should stay because the party wouldn’t really get started until after midnight, Alec was only away from the Institute for a little over two hours. Which was apparently plenty of time for people to make and implement terrible decisions in his absence.

“Good, you’re back,” Izzy greeted him as soon as he walked in the door. “Jace and Clary need backup.”

“Backup?” Alec frowned. “What are they even doing out in the field? Clary Fairchild wasn’t to leave the Institute until we recovered the Mortal Cup. If the Circle gets a hold of her—”

“That’s why they left,” Izzy interrupted him. “Clary got a lead on the Cup and didn’t think they could take the time to wait for you.”

“You could have called me,” Alec pointed out.

“I didn’t know where they were until Jace called for backup right before you got here. I knew they’d left the Institute, but…” Izzy shrugged. “I saw you leave with Magnus earlier. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Alec took a calming breath. Izzy was trying to help, he knew she was.

“In the future,” he said, “please remember that the Mortal Cup and anything related to the Circle take precedence over my personal life. In fact, anything mission-related takes precedence over my personal life.”

He was expecting Izzy to give him grief for being a workaholic, so the sly smile she gave him, like he’d admitted to something he hadn’t meant to, made him immediately wary.

“So, you left with Magnus for personal reasons, huh?”

Dammit. He walked right into that one. “Where are we meeting Jace and Clary?”

“What took you so long?” Jace actually had the gall to look annoyed when the four of them met up in front of the police station.

“What made you think it was a good idea to take Clary out of the Institute on an unsanctioned mission to look for the Mortal Cup without clearing it with me first?” Alec countered.

“It’s complicated,” Jace said.

“We found the Cup,” Clary interjected before Alec could tell Jace exactly what he thought of his excuse. “But, um, then we lost it. We have to sneak back in the precinct to get it.”

“This is a disaster,” Alec said.

“Hey,” Jace said, “demon pox is a disaster. This is an inconvenience. We just need a plan, that’s all."

“What about a glamour?” Izzy suggested.

“We tried that,” Jace told her. “Anyone working with Valentine will see right through it.”

“We know the Cup should be somewhere in the evidence locker,” Clary said. “Can we ask Magnus Bane to portal us inside?” 

“You can only portal somewhere you’ve already been,” Alec said, shaking his head. “I sincerely doubt Magnus has spent much time in the evidence locker of a mundane police station.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to ask,” Izzy pointed out. 

It really could, and Alec didn’t want to disturb Magnus’s night any more than he already had, but in the end, he decided that they didn’t have a lot of options. Besides, who even knew if Magnus would hear his phone over the noise of the party. 

Magnus picked up on the second ring. 

“Alexander, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you before tomorrow. Is everything all right?”

“Hey,” Alec said, “I’m sorry for interrupting your party, but we kind of have a situation, and we could use your help.” 

“Of course,” Magnus said. “It would be terribly rude of me to refuse on the eve of our wedding. What do you need?”

“We need to break into the evidence locker at the mundane police station.” 

“And you think I spend a lot of time in police stations?” Magnus asked. 

“Well, if Ragnor was telling the truth, there was that one time in Barcelona—” 

“You two are never allowed to speak to each other again, I swear,” Magnus said. “I have a couple ideas. We’ll be there in five minutes.” 

Alec hung up the phone and turned to see everyone else watching him with interest. “He’ll be here in five minutes,” he told them. 

“Barcelona?” Izzy asked. 

“Not my story to tell,” Alec said. 

True to his word, Magnus arrived five minutes later, Ragnor in tow, although Ragnor looked significantly less green and horned than the last time Alec had seen him. He supposed Ragnor didn’t bother to glamour his warlock marks much if he wasn’t going to be interacting with mundanes. 

“I do hope this is important,” Ragnor said. “We were just about to get into some real trouble.” 

“What, stealing from the cops isn’t enough trouble for you?” Magnus asked. 

Ragnor waved a hand. “Child’s play, really.” 

Jace gave Alec a long look. “And you were complaining about my plan?” 

Alec shrugged. “They’ve got centuries of experience. Might as well let them try?” 

“Thank you, Alexander,” Magnus said, beaming at him. Alec didn’t mean to smile back. It just sort of happened without his permission. 

“Now,” Magnus said. “What exactly do you need out of the evidence locker?” 

“Dot’s Tarot cards,” Clary explained. “I can draw a quick sketch of what they look like if that would help.” 

“It would,” Magnus said. “Thank you, Biscuit. Now, for the matter of getting inside. Do any of you happen to know if Detective Rodriguez is in at the moment?” 

“He is,” Clary confirmed. “Jace and I saw him when we were inside before.” 

“Perfect,” Magnus said. “As it happens, I have some things I need to give him anyway.” He held out a hand, and it was suddenly filled with a thick folder. 

Magnus and Ragnor spent a few minutes consulting with Clary on what, exactly, the cards they were looking for looked like. Alec noted that Clary didn’t tell them which card specifically they were looking for, or why. It was reassuring to note that the girl could occasionally keep her mouth shut. 

“All right,” Magnus said. “You all just stay here. This should only take a few minutes.” 

“Wait,” Alec said, “the two of you are going by yourselves?” 

“Detective Rodriguez will be suspicious if I show up with a bunch of Shadowhunters in tow,” Magnus said. “Yes, even you, Alexander,” he added before Alec could say anything. “Just, trust me.” 

Alec nodded, because he did. 

“We’ll be back in ten minutes,” Magnus said. 

Behind his back Ragnor held up a hand and mouthed “five,” before following Magnus into the station. 

“Alec,” Jace said as soon as they were out of earshot, “do you really think it’s a good idea to trust a couple of warlocks to get the Mortal Cup? Everyone is after this thing. What if they take it for themselves?” 

“Then it will still be safer than if Valentine had it,” Alec said. “But they won’t.” 

Jace scowled, but didn’t argue further, and instead went over to comfort Clary about the precarious fate of her werewolf father-figure. 

Alec took the opportunity to talk to Izzy. “I need you to do something for me,” he told her. 

“What, helping find the Mortal Cup while you’re off doing who knows what with Magnus isn’t enough?” she teased. 

“We went to his club, we danced, that’s all.” At least, that was all that had happened after they left the Institute. The memory of their earlier kiss was still seared firmly into Alec’s mind. “And no, that’s not enough, because we have far too many balls in the air.” 

Izzy stared at him. “You danced? With Magnus? Is he okay?” 

“Izzy, this is not the time,” Alec said. 

“Alec, the last time I danced with you, you broke my toe. I had to use an iratze and everything.” 

“Yeah, well,” Alec said, not meeting her eyes, “what kind of Shadowhunter wears open-toed shoes?” 

“I was attending our cousin’s wedding in the middle of Alicante. I was also ten.” 

“Can you focus for just a minute, please?” Alec said. At her reluctant nod, he continued. “It turns out warlocks aren’t the only ones disappearing. There are some missing werewolves, too, and maybe some vampires. But nobody has been able to find out if any seelies have gone missing.” 

“And you want me to pump Meliorn for information,” Izzy said with understanding.

“Please do not ever phrase it like that again,” Alec said in a pained voice, “but yes.” 

“I think I can manage that,” Izzy told him. “I have my ways of getting him to talk.” 

Alec was thankfully saved from more innuendo by Magnus’s and Ragnor’s return. 

“Your cards,” Ragnor said, pulling them from inside his coat pocket and handing them to Alec. 

Clary grabbed them from his hands and quickly began flipping through them. Alec let her. 

“Here,” she said breathlessly. “It’s here.” 

“Yeah, maybe don’t announce that to the whole world,” Alec said glancing around to see if any of the nearby mundanes had heard anything. “We should get that back to the Institute.” 

“Alexander,” Magnus said, watching him curiously, “what exactly did we just steal for you?” 

“Portal first, talk later,” Alec said. 

Magnus, of course, stopped him as soon as they were back at the Institute. “So,” he said. “The cards?” 

“My mother hid the Mortal Cup in the cards she painted for Dot,” Clary explained. “Now, I just need to pull it out, and...oh.” She was pressing her fingers against the face of one of the cards. “I guess I need some more practice. I don’t really have this skill down yet.” 

“Practice later,” Alec told her. “For now, the Cup is going somewhere safe.” He grabbed the bag and took it over to one of the Institute vaults, the one keyed specifically to his stele. And since he was finally Head of the Institute, keyed only to his stele, unless the Consul herself decided to stop by. 

“There,” he said, once he had placed the Cup inside. “The Cup is safe until we can take it back to where it belongs, in Idris.” 

He turned to Magnus “Thank you for your help. Again. If you send me your bill—” 

Magnus waved a dismissive hand. “Consider it a wedding present.” 

“I, on the other hand, expect to be paid,” Ragnor said. At Magnus’s dirty look, he rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine. But I was going to get you a much better wedding present.”

The wedding itself went surprisingly without incident. Everyone played as nicely as it was possible for a large crowd of Shadowhunters and Downworlders to do. Magnus did briefly entertain the notion of dipping Alec for a proper kiss when he saw the pinched look on a particularly sour old Shadowhunter who glared throughout the entire ceremony, but decided against it. Alec’s quiet intake of breath at their perfunctory, decidedly chaste kiss was quite enough to make Magnus smile, anyway. 

The aftermath of the wedding, on the other hand, was one long, headache-inducing ordeal. Since this was a political formality, there was no formal reception, but there were a number of people who felt the need to come up and give their opinions on how very important it was for Magnus and Alec to not single-handedly destroy the Accords. It was exhausting, and Magnus had never been as fond of Isabelle as he was when she dragged the two of them away from a particularly cranky and opinionated vampire on the auspices of Clave business. 

“You have my undying gratitude, my dear,” Magnus told her as soon as they’d made their way to Alec’s office. “I don’t think I have ever been quite so grateful for a rescue as I was just then.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I need a favor,” Izzy told him, “but I really do have business to discuss with Alec.” 

“Oh,” Magnus said, “I guess I’ll find somewhere else to be, then.”

“Wait,” Alec said. “Is this about what I asked you to look into last night?” At Izzy's nod, he said, “It's all right. Magnus is part of this, too.”

Izzy gave him a curious look, but said, “I couldn't get a straight answer, but the not straight answer I got is that yes, seelies have gone missing from New York.”

“So that's Downworlders as a whole being taken, then,” Magnus said.

“Not sure if that makes it more or less likely the Circle is responsible,” Alec said. “But at least it's one more piece of information.”

“We aren't going to figure it out tonight,” Izzy told them. “You both look dead on your feet.”

“Just what every man wants to hear on his wedding day,” Magnus quipped. “But it’s true that I could use a solid night of sleep. It's been a while since I've had one.”

“You too, big brother,” Izzy said. “I know exactly how little sleep you got last night.”

“Believe me,” Alec said, “now that the Cup is safe, I fully intend to catch up on the sleep that I've been missing.”

“Then I’ll go distract as many dignitaries as I can so that you can actually get to that sometime this year,” Izzy said, heading back out of the office.

“Speaking of sleep,” Magnus said once the door was closed behind Izzy, “are you staying here tonight or coming back to the loft?”

Magnus did his best not to show his nervousness but couldn't help fidgeting a bit with his rings. They hadn't discussed living arrangements since agreeing that Alec would at least occasionally stay at the loft after the wedding. Magnus didn't want to push the issue, but at the same time, he wanted Alec to know he was welcome at the loft.

“I was thinking I'd sleep at the loft tonight, if that's all right?” Alec kept his eyes carefully averted, affecting a casualness that Magnus could see right through.

“Of course,” Magnus told him. “I have your room all set up for you, whenever you’d like to stay in it.”

Alec gave him a quick smile. “In that case, maybe we should head out now, while Izzy has everyone distracted. I just need to grab a few things first.”

It turned out that when Alexander said a few things, he really meant a few. Magnus had expected more, but perhaps he was planning to move more of his things to the loft later. Or maybe he wasn’t planning to spend as much time at the loft as Magnus had assumed. This was all making him realize they really should have talked about this more before the wedding.  There were so many things they probably should have talked about.

Surprisingly small bag in hand, Alec followed Magnus through the portal back to the loft. For the first time in a very long time, Magnus felt awkward in his own home.

“I set up the guest room for you,” Magnus said, more to fill the silence than anything else, because of course Alexander already knew that. “We didn’t have the chance to talk about what you wanted or needed, so I had to guess, but I can make any changes you want if you just let me know.”

“Thanks,” Alec said, offering him a small smile. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

Magnus followed Alec as he pushed open the door to the guest room—the door to Alec’s room—then paused in the doorway. He’d modeled the decor on what little he’d seen of the bedrooms at the Institute, although the bed was larger and a great deal more comfortable. There were some comforts Magnus wasn’t willing to sacrifice in the hopes of making Alec feel more at home.

Alec dropped his bag on the dresser and made his way to the far side of the room, letting his fingers trail across the small bookshelf and heavy curtains as he went, with Magnus following a few steps behind. He stopped in front of the weapons rack.

“I wasn’t sure what all you’d want with you when you stay here,” Magnus explained, “but there’s room for your bow and quiver and a couple seraph blades. I can adjust it if you need me to. It’s a simple spell, really.”

Alec turned to him, smile bright and genuine. “It’s perfect. Thank you, Magnus.”

Magnus smiled back, nervousness trickling away to be replaced by a satisfied warmth. “You’re welcome, Alexander. I want you to feel at home here.”

“I appreciate it,” Alec said. “Really. This is...” He looked around the room again. “It’s so much more than I was expecting.”

“Well,” Magnus said, “I think I remember something about you needing to catch up on your sleep, so I should let you do that.”

He turned to go but was stopped by a gentle hand on his arm. He looked up at Alec questioningly.

“Before you go,” Alec said, visibly squaring his shoulders. “I wanted to ask, now that the wedding is over and we might have a little more time to ourselves, or at least time to take a break, I was thinking we could, if you want, maybe grab those drinks you asked me about?”

It was, without question, the most awkward way Magnus had ever been asked on a date. He smiled, wide as can be. “I’d like that, Alexander. Maybe in the morning we can look over our schedules and find a time that works for both of us? Over breakfast if you’d like. I conjure a mean Belgian waffle.”

“That sounds great,” Alec said, letting his hand slip from Magnus’s arm.

“It’s a date, then,” Magnus said, stepping back. “Sleep well, Alexander.”

“You, too. Goodnight, Magnus.”

[bella-spil]

2 Romeos & 1 Juliet- Part 5

Part 5.  Fem reader.  Bucky takes reader on second date.

Warnings: implied smut, cursing, drug use.  (definitely a darker story, but I didn't make it too dark, so don’t worry.)

Word Count: 4.2k

Taglist: @angrythingstarlight​ @sea040561​ @kmuir1​ @wednesday-add-em​ (join the list, it’s small, but the more the merrier!)

A/N: sry @kmuir1​ that this took so long.  I Didn’t have time, the usual.  But enjoy!  Sry bout the photo, I thought it was part 4, but its 5. shit

(day of second date with Bucky Barnes)

You had woken up this morning, tired at first but full of energy when you realised what day it was.  You practically jumped out of bed.  Your excitement alone was your energy source as you took a shower, got dressed and headed to the kitchen for breakfast.

When you got to the kitchen, you found Loki making breakfast, surprisingly.  Steve, Tony and Thor were waiting patiently for the food.  Tony was arguing with the two of them for not knowing who AC/DC was.

“Are you fucking kidding me?  What is wrong with you people?  Y/N, please tell me you know who they are?” Tony pleaded.

“Mr. Stark, they have some of my favorite songs so of course I know them,” you said.

“See?  She knows,” Tony smirked.

“I am not of Earth, so of course I won't know this AC/DC person,” Thor said.

“Yeah Tony, and I was under ice for 70 years,” Steve argued back.  Tony just said there and placed his hand on his face, not even trying to hide the disappointment on his face.  You giggled as you prepared yourself a plate.

“Hello there, Y/N,” Loki greeted.

“Morning, since when do you make breakfast?” you asked.

“Since I feel like it,” Loki smirked.  He was making french toast and sunny-side-up eggs, and he was in a very cheerful mood.  You found this odd since Loki was never a morning person and he hated cooking.  And when you looked back to Thor, you could tell he was thinking the same thing.

As soon as Loki finished making the food, Bucky stumbled out of bed.  He was still a little tired, and his long hair was sticking out everywhere.  But as soon as he smelled the food, his dark mood lifted and he rushed to get food.  All of the boys were trying to get as much food as they could, shoving as much as they could on their plates.  But then, they remembered that you were up as well.

“Oh sorry Y/N,” Steve shrugged. “Here, take some of mine.  I know that Tony and Bucky won’t share.”  

“Thanks Steve,” you chuckled.

Steve and Tony were talking while they were eating about an upcoming mission while Thor and Bucky were having a competition to see who could eat the fastest.  Bucky, of course, won with ease, but Thor was pretty close behind.  You and Loki were giggling to yourselves as you watched them.  

“Hey, Reindeer, can I get some water?” Bucky asked, out of breath from eating so much in so little time.  Loki nodded and went over to the cabinet to get the glass.  When he gave Bucky the glass, he had a weird look on his face.  But he always did, he was the God of Mischief for Pete’s sake.  

About an hour later, Bucky was not in his best shape.  He was more tired than normal, he looked like he was going to throw up, and just a complete mess.

“Bucky are you ok?” you asked at lunchtime, where Bucky didn't even touch his plate.

“I’m, I'm fine doll,” Bucky said.

“Not your not, you're burning up!” 

“Doll, I’m fine.  I'm not canceling my date with you,”

“Barnes, go get some rest.  It's ok, you can pick a day when you're feeling better.” you assured him.  His eyes were full of embarrassment.  He felt bad that he had to feel his worse on his date with you.  But he listened to you and you led him to his room.

You helped him get into bed.  You tucked him in and pressed your lips to his forehead, giving him a well deserved kiss for comfort.  As your lips left his forehead he gave you a smile before he closed his eyes and rested.  You could tell he was going to be out for the rest of the day, so you went to your room to relax for the rest of the night.

~~~

At about 4:00 pm, you were rewatching Stranger Things when a knock on the door interrupted.

“Who is it?” you grunted.

“Bucky, open up!” Bucky said through the door.

You did as he said and opened the door for him.  You didn't expect him to look so refreshed.  He looked the complete opposite of himself from earlier.  His hair was groomed, he wasn’t in his pajamas, and he looked full of energy.

“Hey doll, I just wanted to let you know that I feel much better and we can go on your date now,” Bucky said.

“Wait are you sure?  You didn't look good this morning,” you said, concerned.

“I’m sure Y/N, now get ready.  We are leaving in two hours.” Bucky said.

“Hold it Buck,” you said, grabbing the sleeve of his shirt before he left you there.  “Where are we going?”

“If you want to know so badly, we are going to a 40's diner, so wear something vintage.” Bucky smiled before heading to his room to get ready. 

You smiled and headed into your room to look as vintage as possible.  You went through your closet for the closest thing you could find that looked like it was from the 40’s.  But then you remembered for Halloween one year that you were a swing dancer with Nat and Wanda and you found your old costume.  It was a white and black dress.  It had a black collar and it was off the shoulder.  When you spinned around in it, it moved with you, catching the wind and giving a vibrant and lively flare.  

You also were able to find a pair of low, black pumps that complimented the dress perfectly.  And to add a little kick, you put on a pair of ruby earrings that Tony gave to you for your birthday last year.  

Then, you moved on to your makeup.  You had to look up YouTube videos for what type of makeup women wore back then.  But your eyes were set on a look that looked simple yet elegant, perfect for tonight.  The makeup artist looked so natural that it took your breath away.  She had on light amounts of foundation, blush and highlighter.  The only things that stood out were the bright, red lips and the wing of black eyeliner.  You also knew that you didn't have any red lipstick, but you knew someone that did.  Natasha.  So you sent a text to her, asking her to give you the lipstick and help you with your hair and makeup.  A few minutes later she responded, saying she would help and be at your room in 10 minutes.

“Open up!  I have your stuff!” Nat shouted.  You chuckled to yourself before opening the door for her.  

“You ready, girl?” Nat said after giving you a hug.

“Yes ma’am,” you nodded.

“Bathroom now.  We gotta get you all dolled up,” Nat said.  

She led you into the bathroom where she had you sit on the edge of the bathtub while she prepared the makeup and hair tools.  You also gave her a photo for some help, to give her an idea of what you wanted.  She studied the photo for a minute before working her magic.

“Nat?” you asked as she was working on your eyeliner.

“What? Don't move or you'll mess me up,” she said, trying to focus.

“How do you know if you want to be with someone for the rest of your life?” you asked.

Nat took a deep breath, not sure of how to explain.

“Well, I only act like I know everything.  But I do know one thing.” Nat started.  

“If you are with someone, but you only like them just because everyone else does, or because you feel like you have to, it won’t work.  Nothing like that lasts forever.  But if someone that you like makes you feel nothing like that, you know that that person is special.

“That special someone should make you always feel happy, or at least try to make you feel happy when you're not.  You should feel important, special, confident, and happy whenever you are with them and whenever you think of them.  That person should love you for who you are and not force you to be something else.  If they do, that's not true love.” Nat explained as she finished taking your hair out of curlers.  

“Thanks, Nat,” you smiled.

“Anytime, hun,” Nat grinned.

“One last thing.  How can you tell that someone wants to be with you for the rest of your life?”

“Well, they will do anything for you.  Even if it means they die trying.  They will make you feel amazing and everything you want to feel with them.  But they will have a certain look in their eyes that explains it slightly better than I can.  Slightly.  But even if they dont show it 100% of the time, you should know deep in your heart that they love and care about you.”

“Now look in the mirror,” Nat said, applying the final touches.  As you saw yourself in the mirror, you gasped and covered your mouth with your hands.

“Don’t do that!  You'll ruin the lipstick!” Nat panicked, taking your hands off.  You giggled and checked every detail that changed.  Your hair was in a classic curled look.  The curls were unnatural looking, but they looked a lot more neater.  Your makeup was flawless and the whole look was something from a movie.  You looked like Marilyn Monroe, but a more modern version. 

“Wow.  Natasha, thank you! Thank you thank you!!” you squealed.

“Of course, hun.” Nat smiled.  “Now, go out there and finish the job.  Go show Barnes what he will get if he wins you over.”

“Thanks Nat,” you sighed as Nat smirked.  You opened the door and went downstairs but the doorway again with Nat behind you.  When you got there, Tony, Steve and Sam were eating dinner.

“Who is that?” Sam said, shocked at your sudden change in style.  He gave you a little cheer, which made you blush.

“Damn girl,” Tony said, giving you a whistle of approval.

“Wow Y/N.  You look like all the girls from the 40’s.  Just better.” Steve smiled.

“All the girls that swooned over you or the ones that rejected you?” Nat snickered.  Sam and Tony were laughing their asses off while Steve gave Nat a death glare.  She just smiled and winked at you.

“Wow,” Bucky said.  He was waiting by the doorway, like last time, but you didn't see him at first since Steve, Tony and Sam were distracting you.  He had on a white T-shirt and dress pants with black suspenders.  And of course, he had his signature dog tags on.  He also had a box of chocolates and a bouquet of white roses for you.  His hair was tied back into a man bun and he shaved his light stubble.  Overall, he looked very different than what you were used to seeing.  He looked neater, more put together, and very happy.  Also out of breath from seeing you.

“Hi Bucky,” you said as you walked over to him.

“You look like something from heaven, sugar,”

“Not too shabby yourself, Barnes.” you smiled back.  

“You’re such a dreamboat,” Bucky gushed, taking your hand and leading you to the car.

“So are you,” you blushed.  He smiled back at you and gave you a kiss on the cheek before opening the car door for you.  

While you were in the car, Bucky put on some old songs that he grew up with.  Most of them you didn't know, but they were all great songs.  He was singing along and smiling, making you laugh and join in with him.

Then a little bit later, you guys made it to the diner.  Bucky was being very polite, opening the door for you, and always saying “ladies first.”  You always found yourself blushing around the Winter Soldier, and it was kinda annoying because you did it so much.  As you made your way inside, a waitress led you to your table for the night.  

While walking to the table, you found yourself looking at every corner of the diner.  Tons of red, cushioned bar stools, the checkered tiles, an old jukebox with tons of records to choose from.  Everything about this place looked like a movie set.  It was so old yet full of life.  And tons of people filled the tables, all in a good mood.  You and Bucky made it to the table, smiling and looking at some old school menus.

“So doll, what will it be?” Bucky asked, clearly already knowing what he wanted. 

“Well I don't know, what do you think is good?” you asked.

“If I were you, I wouldn't leave here without a milkshake.  But, I would get the meatloaf.  Here, they make it so it doesn't taste like liver.” Bucky said.

“Liver?” you asked.  “Ok fine.  And I am definitely going to get a milkshake.”

Then a few minutes later, the waitress gave you both a glass of water and took your orders.  Her name was Nancy, and she was a very sweet old lady.  She had short, curly, gray hair, glasses and rosy cheeks.  She looked like Mrs. Claus.

“What is the weirdest thing you ate in the 40’s, because the liver sounds pretty bad,” you mocked.

“There’s one thing that will gross you out.  And it's worse than liver,” Bucky grinned.

“Oh lord,” you sighed.

“Jello,” Bucky said.

“Jello?” you asked.  “Seriously?”

“No, no.  It's not the jello you're thinking of.  It kinda is though but it's worse.” Bucky said.

“Why is it worse?”

“Because jello was eaten for every meal.”

“Every meal?  Even dinner?”

“Even dinner,” Bucky said.  “They even had chicken jello where they would put chicken and tons of vegetables inside.”

“Bucky stop, I'm gonna throw up on you,” you laughed.

“Don’t you do that,” Bucky teased.

Before you knew it, your dinner was served.  Bucky also got meatloaf like you, but it wasn’t only meatloaf.  There was a side of mashed potatoes and it came with a side of gravy to pour on top.  As soon as you put a piece in your mouth, you knew you wouldn't be able to stop.  It tasted too good to be true, like a Christmas dinner.  When you finished, you felt your dress getting tighter on your stomach and you knew it wouldn't be too long before one of the seams popped.

“Doll, do you wanna dance?” Bucky suddenly asked.

“What?”

“Do you wanna dance?”

“I don't dance, and I don't know how people in the 40’s danced.” you said.

“I’ll show you how,” Bucky smiled.

“I’d hate to step on your shoes,” you teased.

“Don’t worry if you do.  I might be a little outta sync as well.” Bucky said.

“Fine, just give me a minute.  I gotta go to the restroom.”  you said getting up from your seat.

Bucky smiled at you as you left.  He was just waiting for the moment when you said, “I love you Bucky.”  He just hoped that he could convince you before “That son of a bitch Loki” did, as Bucky would call him.  

As you were in the bathroom, Bucky looked around the room to make sure that nobody was looking at his table.  He wanted to be as discreet as possible.  Just like he was when he was the Winter Soldier.  His Winter Soldier skill set kicked in as he took one final swing of the room.  

Then he looked into his pocket and pulled out a tiny plastic bag.  It had something white and small inside, shaped like a pill.  Bucky has this pill to help him cope with his days as the Winter Soldier, but tonight this little pill had another use.  

Rohypnol, also known as roofies, forget-me-pill and R-2, and one of the top three Rape Drugs in the world.  This drug is like Xanax, but it is approved for medical use, making it easier to get.  Easier to use on others.  It makes people feel very sleepy, confused and they can often forget what happened when it kicks in 30 minutes later and stays like that for hours on end.  It also lowers your defenses, meaning you wouldn't be able to use your powers against him or attack him in any way until the drug wore off.  

When you put it in a drink, it's often colorless and it doesn't have a taste or smell, perfect for knocking out enemies without them knowing.  It can also make the person who took the drug feel weak and have trouble breathing, making it harder to move their body.

The perfect drug to claim you as his.  Once and for all.

When Bucky put the R-2 in your drink, he felt his old, evil, torn apart come back from the dead.  The Winter Soldier in him resurfaced for the time that you were gone, alive and well like the Devil.  His grin stretched further than the Grinch’s and the bubbles fizzing in the cup only fueled his desires even more.  As he was basking in his glory, the song “Feeling Good” by Michael Buble started playing in the background.  He felt like the ultimate super villain in that one moment.  Nothing, absolute nothing could top this moment for him.

When you came back from the bathroom, you felt more refreshed.  You came back to a happy Bucky, happier seeing you back in front of him than when you were gone.  

“Miss me?” you teased.

“Oh toots, you have no idea,” Bucky said.  

Then in the background, an old song, “Pennsylvania 6-5000” by Glenn Miller came on, a song you didn’t even know existed.  

“Wanna dance?  I’ll teach you, just come with me,” Bucky offered, standing in front of you, holding his hand out.

You took his hand as he led you to the middle of the diner.  He had to figure out the timing for the beat before he started dancing, but it all kicked back in once the time was right.  He started moving his feet forward and swinging his arms to the beat.

“C'mon doll, join me!” Bucky said and you tried your best to copy his movements.

“See this isn’t bad right?” Bucky teased.

“Yeah, yeah you made your point,” you rolled your eyes.  

Then the beat started to pick up, and more eyes from others made you tense up and Bucky, being able to sense it, distracted you.

“Don’t worry ‘bout them, doll.  In no time, they will be joining in with us.” Bucky assured you.  

You nodded and kept dancing with him.  But Bucky made his dance more complicated.  He started doing the Charleston.  And he was a fucking pro at it too.  You tried to copy him, but he was going too fast and it made everything seem harder than it was.

“Look at me, and watch my movements ok?  Look, one, two, three, four and you repeat.  Got it?”  Bucky explained as he was moving his arms and legs in slow motion for you to pick up on.  

You had to make him do it a few times before you got the hang of it.  Soon you were adding your own little bits of flare to it, even outshining Bucky.  You realized that the Charleston was a fairly easy dance to learn, compared to the Can-Can at least.

Soon, people in the booths started cheering for you and Bucky, and they all eventually started to join in.  It felt like a high school party, tons of sweaty bodies clashing into each other, people dancing and smiling, overall, people just having a wonderful time.  You moved your legs and arms with such grace and elegance that you made Bucky look like a chicken on a tightrope compared to you.  Some men tried to get a dance with you, even trying to flirt with you at some points, but they backed off once they saw the metal arm that Bucky was so graciously sporting.

Bucky spun you around like a top and you and him were laughing so much.  You felt so alive and free with him.  You were wondering if that was the feeling Nat was telling you about earlier.  That feeling of warmth, being special.  And you did see something shining in his eyes that was different.  But you weren’t sure if it was love since you’ve never seen that before.  

Then, to everyone’s disappointment, the song ended.  You and Bucky sighed in annoyance, like all of the others, but it was quickly taken over by panting.  You and Bucky were out of breath, you especially since you outshined Bucky.  

“C'mon doll, let's get a drink,” Bucky said as you headed back to your table.                        

“Agreed.  By the way, what was the name of the song?” you asked since you’ve never heard of it before.

“And you call me dumb,” Bucky sighed and you hit him in the arm.  “It’s called Pennsylvania 6-5000 by Glenn Miller.”

“Well if I didn't know the song, I guess that makes you a fuddy-duddy then,” you mocked, after you took a big, long sip of your water.

“Let’s get milkshakes for the ride home,” Bucky offered, and you happily agreed.

You and Bucky left the diner, milkshakes in hand, laughing about how you outdanced him.  You had gotten vanilla and he got strawberry, and you were both trying each others.  You were laughing, but also tired from dancing, and so was Bucky.  So the car ride wasn’t as talkative as the ride there, but the silence was comforting in a way.

As you were looking out the window, Bucky was gauging the amount of time it would take to get to the Compound.  Normally, it takes about 15 minutes to get there, but the traffic earlier made it take 30 minutes.  So he had to figure out a way for the Rohypnol to kick in without making himself look suspicious.  Luckily, the car was running out of gas, the perfect excuse to stop the car for a good amount of time and stall.

You didn’t really notice what was happening, since you were so tired.  You did see Bucky filling up the gas tank, smiling at you, making sure you were ok every now and then.  But the gas station passed as quickly as it came, and soon you were on your way home again.

Bucky was glad his stalling had pulled off.  It bought some time, and you only had 10 minutes left till you got back home and till the rest of the night carried on.

Before you knew it, you were already home.  Bucky had gotten out of the car and walked around to your side, to be a gentleman and open the door for you.  But you were extremely tired now, and you had no clue why.  Your body felt like it was running on 5% power.  You could barely function, but you could still see, hear and move.  Just not up to normal.

“Here doll,”  Bucky offered.  “Lean on my arm and I’ll walk you back inside, ok?”

“Mmk,” you slurred.  

Bucky took his time on purpose, making sure you were walking ok and being polite.  You took a few minutes before you made it inside.  You were walking down the hallway, but not to your room.

“Bucky… where we goin?” you mumbled.

“Somewhere you’ve been before,” Bucky said calmly.  

Before he led you to it, he looked around the hallway one last time, just to make sure the others weren’t awake, but they weren’t so Bucky proceeded.  He ended up taking you to his room, and you were lost as to why.

“Why are we… we here?” you asked. 

“Let’s help you out of this dress,” Bucky said, completely ignoring you.  

You didn’t care at that moment, so you just let him undress you.  Under your dress, you had on a matching set of dark red and black lace bra and panties.  Bucky just took a step back before you fell back onto the bed.  You were lazily playing with your hair, making you look 20 times more attractive.  

“Doll, you gotta stop doing that?” Bucky groaned.

“Why?” you moaned, not on purpose though.

“Because I don’t think I will last,” Bucky said.  

He slowly took off his shirt and suspenders, revealing a god-like body.  His metal arm was reflecting the little light the room had to offer.  His abs and biceps were flexing, showing off his muscular torso and his veins were popping through his skin.  He moved down his body to his pants, letting them fall to his feet.  He was only wearing his black boxers now.  And he took his hair out of his man bun, letting the strands of dark brown hair fall.

You weren’t really paying attention to him though.  You didn't even notice him stalking you closer and closer until he was right on top of you.  

“Bucky what are you doing?” you asked, tiredly.

“Oh sugar, I didn’t give you that name for nothing.  Let’s hope it lives up to it.” Bucky said as he hovered over you.

“Bucky,” you said, trying to push him off of you.

“If you keep doing that, we are going to have a long night, doll.”

[cannibalisticskittles]

first impressions

notes: first impressions are everything. this one’s pretty shit. ao3 link.

If there’s anything Lucia can trust, it’s that anyone involved in politics is distinctly untrustworthy. Vampire politics don’t seem to be an exception to that rule.

Find a tape, Lu, it’ll be easy! No, you won’t have to beat off hordes of fleshy abominations to get it, and your reward for finding it certainly won’t be having to crawl through a filthy sewer system infested with a horrorshow of even more fleshy abominations, oh, heavens no!

Ugh, the things she does to avoid decapitation.

Given the state of the surrounding sewers, she’d sort of thought she’d be facing something dire when she took her plunge — tunnels flooded with those goddamn ankle-biters, or the bloody aftermath of such an attack, or… something.

But this is not what she finds. No, what she emerges into is downright cozy.

Strings of lights, neon signs, plush couches with signs of wear but no tear — she simply must get the name of their decorator when this sarcophagus business is taken care of — and a distinct lack of death. There isn’t even a hint of that cloying smell of decay that followed her through the sewers. Though… there are an awful lot of empty rooms. Where is everyone? Did those Tzimisce creations sweep through here already, or has she managed to stumble on some abandoned, if well-decorated, subsection of the sewers? If she has to climb back out that hole and start this godforsaken search anew…

But something — a flash of movement maybe, or a soft noise that she can’t attribute to the buzz of the lights or the echo of her own footsteps — draws her to an untried door, and this is how she meets ‘the resident tech-head.’

It takes several minutes of waiting around, twining strands of hair around her finger, to get his full attention, and then there is that dreadful, time-wasting business of introductions — ‘yes, I’m LaCroix’s errand girl, yes, I’m very interested in speaking to Gary, no, I’m not asking because I’m here for payback or to off him, LaCroix fucking wishes, what was that about a network?’

She leaves with a promise to check her email as soon as she’s out of the warrens, and the knowledge that the person she seeks is ‘just down the hall.’

— though, even with Mitnick’s directions, she ends up just a touch off course, and the owner of the room behind the next door she opens is…

‘Imalia, Imalia, now where have I heard that name before? —ah, did you ever do a shoot in Monaco? I worked with a guy who did the lighting for that who just raved about it the entire time we were arranging that gallery, it was all he could talk about for days. That you? Fantastique, lovely to meet you.’

She accepts a webcam even as she imagines all the ways it could break in between now and the next time she reaches the surface, with all that crawling through the sewers she’ll have to do. Still, she just can’t say ‘no’ to a pretty face.

Down the hall, down the hall, further and further, stepping lightly across the broken bridge, until she reaches a point where there is no more hall, just… a narrowing that looks suspiciously like the beginning of a tunnel. But at the end of it is a door, visible when she hunches, so on hands and knees, she continues forward. These tunnels were clearly not designed with someone of her stature in mind. She is going to have words with the architect when she gets out of here.

As she reaches the door, the tunnel widens enough for her to stand, thankfully, and she pauses before she pushes them open. Right. Primogen ahead. Gotta look sharp. First impressions are everything, no? There’s nothing she can do about the… unfortunate stench she’s picked up from swimming through sewer-muck, but she can at least rub the dust off her palms and brush wayward strands of hair out of her face.

And then she is… well, she cannot possibly look good. But this is, perhaps, as good as she’s going to get. She draws herself up to her full height, steels herself, and strides through the doors.

...into an empty room.

Ah. Well. That’s… rather disappointing.

The decor’s not bad in here, at least, though it could do with a good dusting. Skeletons placed in a ghoulish facsimile of life? A bold artistic choice.

She runs her fingers through the bright orange wig on the skeleton closest to her. Synthetic? Or just dyed human hair? That is one of those little details that can make or break a display. If she ignores the dust, it is smooth enough, so perhaps —

And then there is a voice, so close behind her that she begins to drop into a defensive stance and her fingers twitch towards the sledgehammer strapped to her back before she realizes herself.

Not your space, don’t offend, just keep your cool and get some answers so you can end these bullshit errands and get back to your life.

She lets her hands go slack and forces some of the stiffness from her stance. There is an apology ready and waiting on her tongue to smooth over the misunderstanding as she rises and turns — but there is no one there. No one at her side. No one behind her.

“Where…?” The word is faint. She has forgotten to breathe again. “Where are you?”

This time, there is a chuckle, just by her ear.

“Maybe I’m in your head,” breathes the voice, and she does react this time, arm jerking out in a wide arc. She touches nothing but air.

“Stop that.” A crack in her voice halfway through ruins the demand. Quavering is not conducive to an imperious air. “I’m not here for — for payback,” she says, recalling what Mitnick said. “I just want to talk.”

“We are talking.”

The voice comes from her other side now, and again, her fingers are met with only air.

“But you aren’t listening, boss.”

For the briefest of moments, she wonders whether this is some elaborate trap, and some new Tzimisce creation is trying to tangle her up in panic, but — no, no, no, that doesn’t make sense, other Nosferatu are just down the way so they can’t have reached the warrens, and those fleshy little monsters can’t talk, anyway. ...they had better fucking not be able to talk.

Tzimisce or no, though, she is being fucked with, that much is clear.

She makes a cautious loop around the table, peering under it and into the darkened corners, but she still can’t make out the source of the voice.

“...I don’t like games,” she murmurs.

“And you’re used to getting what you want, aren’t you, lovely?” Her lip curls at that tone. “People just love your charisma, your face. They eat your words up like rats eat the cheese from the trap. Oh, boss, where do you think you are?”

She hisses a breath out through her teeth. “I think I’m in some dank-ass sewers having a grand old time with some jackass who won’t show his face taking potshots at me,” she mutters — though not softly enough, apparently, because the next moment, she’s tripping over her feet as the voice returns, slipping over her like fingers tracing down her spine.

“Maybe I’m a ghost.” There’s a laugh as she stiffens. “Oh, c’mon. Don't tell me you just stumbled down here. What I need to know is, why you’re here.”

The fuck does he think she’s here for? “Come out and we’ll talk it over,” she says, aiming for diplomatic even as her hands clench into fists at her sides.

“I’m over here, boss! Wait, maybe I’m over here!” True to form, his voice bounces around her, following when she turns her head to track it. “Or maybe I’m behind you, with a hatchet in my hand.” Can you get motion sickness when you’re standing still? Because all this twirling and spinning and echoing is really doing a number on her head.

She settles herself on the edge of the table and tips her head back, squeezing her eyes shut. A grimy ass-print on his nice table is the price he gets to pay for taunting her.

“Or... did you ever stop to think that your fear, if given a voice, would sound... like... this.” That last whisper is close enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

“Stop it.”

“What’s the matter, boss? You scared? That’s good... shows you've been paying attention.”

Her mouth slants down sharply. Scared? He thinks she’s scared? Ridiculous. The idea sets her teeth on edge, fangs and all.

“What do you want?” she hisses — and then flinches back at the sudden contempt in his voice.

“I want to stick your lovely face in a piranha tank; I want to apply an acid glaze to your sculptured body; I want to throw your pocket mirror under a thresher and watch you fetch it.”

Her hands clench on the edge of the table, sawing little rivulets in the lacquer with her nails. Well, that’s — pretty fuckin’ personal. What’s she ever done to him, huh?

When he next speaks, his voice is almost cloyingly sweet compared to that delightful little confession. “But I’m no butcher, boss. Are you?”

And oh, but the urge to be one itches at her. It would be so easy to slam her sledgehammer right into the middle of his fancy little tableau vivant and turn this entire display into nothing more than bits of bone and sawdust. She lets her fingers flex, imagining the weight of the weapon in her hand and how satisfying it would be to put an end to this maddening little game — and then she crosses her palms carefully over each other. It’s only a fantasy. “I’m just here for the sarcophagus.”

“You don’t say. Wake up, boss! Who do you think you’re dealing with? Why else would LaCroix send you on this snipe hunt? Oh, that's right... I know you work for the prince.”

She has to suppress a snort at that. Who doesn’t know that? Only been a vamp for a week, and already everyone she’s met knows aaaaaall about her business. “Why even ask, then?”

“Because I like the sound of my own voice.”

And that — that growl, that trill — startles a laugh from her before she can stop it. The bastard’s having fun with this.

“It’s not every day we get visitors, boss. I needed to hear it from you. You’re a long way from home, and neither the prince nor Isaac nor Nines have any domain down here. Tread carefully.”

She kneads the space between her eyebrows. “Great, you happy? All my cards are on the table. Now just… tell me about the sarcophagus so I can get out of here.”

There’s a door over yonder. If she opens it, will he pop out like the wizard of Oz, bereft of his curtain? She pushes off from the table and stands, tempted to try it, but his voice ringing out once more gives her pause.

“You should’ve got here sooner. That lot’s been sold.”

“To whom?” she demands. She takes a step forward, moving on instinct towards the last place the voice seemed to echo from — the door she first came in.

“I like to discuss business face-to-face.”

Of course he does. And his voice is behind her, again.

“Then show yourself.”

“Are you sure, boss? You don’t want my image in your subconscious. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of.”

She bites back a scoff. “I’m dying of anticipation.”

“Careful what you wish for, you just... might... get it.”

He grows quieter and quieter until she can’t hear anything at all. Where, where, where…?

“Behind you, boss — boo!”

She whirls, and there, towering before her — no easy feat at her height — is the figure that has been taunting her all this time, and he is —

— not that fuckin’ bad looking. This is the face that’s supposed to haunt her nightmares?

The disconnect is enough to startle her out of all the things she’d planned to say — something along the lines of ‘you slimy-ass, smarmy motherfucker, where do you get off making my job harder’ but with just a touch more snarling — and what tumbles out of her mouth instead is far briefer and lacks much of the delicate nuance of her original plan for her soliloquy:

“Fucking incredible.”

His face twists in displeasure and a spark of delight flares in the pit of her dead stomach. Oh, this is much more fun when she can see his reactions.

So she gives him a slow, obvious once-over and raises her chin sky-high, a flippant gesture done solely to get under his skin. Would that she only had a pair of sunglasses to complete the mask of indifference.

“You sure are something, huh?”

A scowl appears on his face.

“En garde, Toreador. You vainglorious, narcissistic poseur!” Looks like that hit its mark. She bites back a grin. “How I loathe that determination of your kind to belie your true nature with Paris fashions and pomp. You are a dead thing — a creature of the shadows. Start acting like one.”

‘Toreador.’ People do seem to put an awful lot of stock into this whole ‘clan’ thing, don’t they? Should she assume that this is the reason for some of those lovely comments and he has not, in fact, divined the true nature of her soul from a brief conversation? How interesting. And how... informative.

“I,” she says, “am not going to ask who you are, because if I went through all this and you aren’t Gary, the disappointment might strike me dead on the spot.”

“What? You don't recognize me from the pictures? Gorgeous Gary Golden? Don't tell me you missed Pirate Town or Tap Hotel?” He tilts his chin up and angles his head as if to call to mind some iconic pose or image. There’s a self-satisfied twist to his lips when he next speaks. “Little before your time, eh, boss? Well, those days are long past. Nowadays, it's just Gary.”

Oh, this is definitely more fun now that she can see him. The expressions, those motions, all topped off by that voice — she just might look into those movies of his when she has a free moment. If only LaCroix didn’t have the sword of Damocles hanging over her head — but such is the way of things. And nobody does anything for free.

So: “I take it you have a favor or two lined up for me before you let slip whatever secrets you have?”

“Real original. You think that up all by yourself?” She splays a hand across her chest and grins, the picture of false humility. “Tell me, boss, you ever gone up against a Kuei-jin?”

Like that life-sucker Knox turned her onto? “Sure, I’m a regular Kuei-jin killing machine.”

That earns her a chuckle. Not a bad sound.

The bottom line is simple: head a rescue mission to retrieve a stray Nosferatu from Chinatown and she’ll learn the location of the sarcophagus.

Pretty straightforward. Still, she taps a finger against her lips, deliberating as though she really has any room to bargain. “Don’t suppose there’s anything you can give me to make this a little easier?”

His eyes narrow. “That thing behind that pretty face of yours is called a brain. If you want to survive in Chinatown, I suggest you use it. Or if all else fails, you could just use your pocket mirror to blind them.”

Her lips twitch up. “Merveilleux. Would’ve never guessed that without your expertise. I suppose all that’s left to do is get to it.”

“There’s a payphone in Chinatown. I’ll call you with the info once Barabus is safe.” There’s a particular sort of gleam in his eye when he says, “until then, you’ll never know where I am.” She’s inclined to believe that.

“Yeah, yeah… ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you,’ right? She levels a steady finger at him. “I will have your Barabus back by dawn. So you be ready for that phone call.” And she turns on her heel.

That side door she saw earlier, there’s decent odds that leads to another tunnel and not a closet, right? Because it’s hard enough to saunter in shit-caked heels — sue her, she was dressed for a glitzy Hollywood outing, not for slogging through sewers — and having to immediately wobble back the way she came would be mortifying.

But no — she pushes open the door and there is a path stretching out ahead of her. Thank god. Still, she pauses, one hand resting on the doorframe.

“By the way,” she says, “you keep saying such sweet things, and people will start to talk.”

She doesn’t bother looking back. She knows how that trick goes.

[thedefinitionofbts]

Upon Your Existence (2)

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3

Pairings: Jeon Jungkook x Reader (ft. the rest of BTS)

Genre: Science Fantasy, Fluff, Angst, Royal Au

Words: 8.1K

Description: …and so they just meet each other in these stories written inside these worlds built in their minds. Of course some will be sad, and others happy, but that’s just the way the universe is…chaotic, imperfect, but magnificently beautiful.  

As the sun vanishes in sync with the rising moon, red lanterns glow luminously in the crowded courtyard, bringing the palace grounds to life. Court ladies, guests, and members of the royal sphere gather for the much-anticipated celebration. Dancers dressed in festive costume rush to the center stage, beginning their elaborate performance as music and sounds of laughter fill your ears, submerging you in a haze.

You weren’t particularly fond of imperial parties such as this one, overly extravagant and fundamentally pointless, other than the fact that it was part of tradition and a deliberate way of displaying wealth and power. You didn’t like the noise, the blinding lights, the fancy props, or the amount of wine every one drowned themselves in. It was uncomfortable, aggravating even. Your eyes search for an opening to make your escape, hoping that the eclectic assortment of activities will be enough of a distraction to conceal your empty seat next to your mother, the empress.

Luckily you find your opportunity just as she stands to serve your father wine. It’s a hasty getaway; one that you are not so unfamiliar with, as you have taken the exact same course of action at every other party that has threatened to swallow you in mind-numbing boredom.

The music diminishes the further you run, and the air finally feels breathable. You stop when you’re sure it far enough your head stops spinning, still trapped within the palace walls but at least it was a more peaceful area. It was quite, sans the chirping of crickets and occasional breeze that rustles the leaves on the trees.

You exhale a long sigh of relief, finally able to relax.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

You head whips around to the source of the voice, heart almost leaping out of your throat. “Who’s there?” You hiss, pupils shooting in various directions until it lands upon the figure sitting comfortably on the bench. It’s difficult to tell, but you can at least make out that he is a man.

He only chuckles at your alarm. “Don’t worry, I’m a prince not some assassin.”

You take a step closer to examine him. “Are you sure you are a prince, and that you are even allowed to be here?” You eye him suspiciously, his plain brown rob making it quite obvious he’s either lying or in disguise. Judging from the design of his attire, he must be from the state of Jeon, if you weren’t mistaken and if those private tutoring sessions where finally paying off.

“I am.” He answers with a slightly amused grin and a mysterious glint in his eyes. “But are you sure you are allowed to be here?”

The audacity. You make an offended face. “I’m a princess! Is it not obvious?”

He tilts his head to get a better look, making you suddenly tense at the weight of his inspection. No man has ever had the guts to stare so intently at a princess, especially not one as highly ranked as you, the first daughter of the emperor’s main wife. Even princes would not even dare to look a princess in the eye unless they were arranged to be married.  

“Who knows?” He comments nonchalantly. “You could be a commoner trying to sneak into that party.” He nods towards the vivid lights filling the palace you had barely just been able to escape.

“What commoner could get their hands a dress made of dragon silk and embroidered with golden phoenix feathers?” You cross your arms.

He shrugs, feigning oblivion.

“And for the record, I was sneaking outof that party.” Your revelation causes him to cock a brow.

“A princess sneaking out of one of the grandest celebrations in the land?”

“Ugh, not you too” You frown, sighing heavily. “I don’t particularity enjoy being the center of attention, especially not when the sole purpose is to celebrate my birth.”    

He looks up with the sudden realization, eyes wide but not completely in shock. “Let me guess, you’re the emperor’s first daughter.”  His expression is hard to read, not as stunned as you would expect, but you usually have to give people a few minutes to let these things sink in.  

“Took you long enough to figure out. Did I not just say this dress is-“

“Right, dragon silk and phoenix feathers…” He drops his gaze, face flushing ever so slightly as he nods, smiling to himself for not putting two and two together earlier.

“And you? Why are you snooping around here?”

At that he looks up, lips still curved upward. “I too just came out of there.” He tips his head toward the direction you had come.

“Oh, were you among the princes who attended?” You attempt to recall if you saw him among the group of what your mother would call “potential suitors”, but all you can dig up from the depths of your recent memory is a crowd of faceless men.

“Wow, I must really be unappealing.” He clutches his chest, pretending to be hurt.

You laugh, throwing your head back at his self-deprecating statement. “You’re…” You glance back at him, scrutinizing his features under the silvery moonlight.

As you take a moment to allow your eyes trace over the outline of his profile, you find yourself lost in how contrasting yet complimentary the details of his appearance are. His skin is glowing with youth, nose tall and perfectly shaped paired with lips that are small but plump. His jawline is sharp but his cheeks are still impossibly soft. And then there are his eyes, large and round orbs that seem to hold the stars.

“…above average.” You swallow finishing your sentence with a blatant lie and praying he can't tell you’re flustered because truth be told he was way beyond average. In fact, you don’t think you’ve ever met a prince this attractive.

“I’m honored.” He grins, making your heart do things it’s never done. “It’s not every day the crown princess ranks you above average in looks.”

Your cheeks are on fire and you have to look away. “Well, there aren’t many handsome princes.”

“So are you saying I’m handsome?” His face lights up playfully.

“No! I mean, yes!” You face palm at your give away, squeezing your eyes shut and cursing your lack of composure.

He holds back a laugh, choosing to let his attention be drawn towards the surrounding area. It’s too dark to make out the trees and shrubbery, but you’re too caught up in your own embarrassment to notice him absorbed in his own thoughts. The moon is so round it almost looks fake, hanging like a giant silver coin in the dark indigo sky, so close it’s like you could touch it if you reached up.  

A moment later, he speaks again. “Well, for the record, you’re just as beautiful as they say.”

At that you turn to him, meeting his gaze. Time stills with only the sound of crickets chirping and the muffled noises of the celebration present to signal it’s still getting later.

“May I ask your full name?” You manage to request.  

“Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook.” He replies, lips twitching up at the corners.

“Jungkook...” You repeat, solidifying the syllables in your head. “How long will you be staying here?”

“A while actually.”

“Oh, I see.” You nod, suddenly too nervous to solicit your next question.

Thankfully he jumps in just before the pause becomes awkward. “If you’re free, we could maybe, perhaps meet at the summer garden sometime?”

“I am!” You mentally face palm again, regretting answering so zealously, like you weren’t a princess meant to stay poised.

His face lights up again. “Then I shall be waiting.”

…

Early morning calligraphy lessons were the worst.

Master Lee was one of the best teachers in the land, but that also made him extra strict when it came to your writing. From the way you held the brush, to the form in which you maneuvered your wrist to paint each stroke, he was critical down to the last detail. You didn’t like calligraphy class, never did. Being shut in a room for hours at a time with your instructor breathing down your back was never your cup of tea. It didn’t help that you never saw much improvement in your skills, despite having taken lessons since you were six years old.

This morning was no different from any other, with the sun’s pale yellow rays barely penetrating through the window, open just wide enough to light up the dusty room but not enough for you to comfortable enjoy the view of the outdoors, a place you long to be.

“Stay focused, and loosen your grip” Master Lee’s stern voice echoes from across the room, making you whip your head back to the thin canvas in front of you. The characters you had already written in black ink staring back at you, each more hideous than the last.

You hated calligraphy.

“Master Lee, can you tell me about the State of Jeon?” The query slips past your lips, surprising even yourself, but ever since last night, you had not stopped thinking about the mysterious prince you had met.

“They are craftsmen. Artists. Known for their paintings and music.” He replies, slowly walking around the room. “Why the sudden curiosity?”

“Well, I met a prince from there last night.” You pause, regretting not being more discreet.

“Ah, the eldest Jeon and heir to the throne.” He nods, before stopping to furrow his brows. “Junghyun, was it?”

“He said his name was Jungkook.” You correct, wondering if you actually heard wrong last night.

“Oh, the younger brother.” Master Lee chuckles. “I’ve heard much about him. Yes. He’s quite the talented painter, cares nothing about statewide affairs or politics, but loves the arts.”

Your ears perk up at this newly revealed information. Today was the day you were supposedly meeting him at the summer garden, an arrangement you had hastily agreed to less than twelve hours ago. The thought of it makes your heart pound. Would he actually show up? What if he forgets? And why are you so excited to see someone you barely knew?

The questions continue to spin through your mind, along with fuzzy images of his appearance under the moonlight, the way his eyes twinkled beneath the stars and his alluring smile somehow conveying more than words ever could.  

“Princess Y/N” Master Lee’s abrupt reminder triggers you to jump in your chair.

You look down to see that in the midst of your daydreaming, you had let your soaking brush settle in one spot for too long, causing the ink to drench the cloth sheet, leaving a giant black glob where the end of your stroke should’ve glided smoothly into a pointed tail.

“Sorry, Master” You clear your throat, hoping he won’t report this to your mother, or worse…make you start all over.

You hear him release a loud sigh, the disappointment evident in his features. “One more time” He grumbles.

…

The spring breeze is dry and not so subtly grassy. Warm sunlight drapes over your exposed skin, putting you at peace amidst the subdued, yet perceivable anxiousness building in your stomach. After being inside for so long, the brightness of midday is almost blinding, but your eyes soon adjust enough for you to take in the lovely scenery- the calm surface of the pond blanketed with lily pads and lotus flowers, the small stone bridge drawing a perfect half circle above the water, and the willow trees dancing along the shores.

It’s a scene you’ve been familiar with since you were young. The beauty of the summer garden always drew you to make daily visits, always alone, always for the purpose of escaping the maids who watched your every step, away from your mother who would endlessly remind you of your duties as a princess, and away from confining palace life, even if it was short lived and not even that far away. Trips to the garden were always relaxing, but today your heart is brimming with anticipation.

Your eyes scan the area for signs of the person you had come to see, the person you expect to be waiting for you. It doesn’t take long for you to spot him standing under the pavilion overlooking the picturesque area. His arms are crossed behind his back, and you suspect he has yet to become aware of your presence.

“Prince Jeon?” You voice as you walk up to him, feeling the knot in your chest tighten a tad bit.

He’s initially startled when he turns, eyes stretched wide akin to that of a child’s, but a joyous smiles appears the second he realizes it’s you.

“Princess Y/N” He bows respectfully, causing you to giggle.

“What’s this now? You’re finally convinced I’m not a commoner?”

He laughs. “Would you prefer I ditch the formalities?”

“Sure” You shrug, having never been a fan of the rules of proper conduct to begin with. “When no one else is around, we can just be commoners. So I can just call you Jungkook, right?” The name rolls off your tongue surprisingly well, like muscle memory, despite it being only the second or third time you’ve physically pronounced it.  

“Of course.” He gazes into your eyes for a moment too long, as if waiting for something serendipitous, but it only elicits a choked up response from you.

“On second thought, Prince Jeon works too” You divert your eyes, wishing your heart would stop skipping beats.

He only smiles at that, switching his attention back to the pond.

You decide to change the subject. “You said you would be here in the capital for a while? For what reason?”

“I’m taking lessons like I suspect you do as well, only they’re probably not as fun as yours.”

“Ugh, my lessons are not fun. I hate calligraphy.”

He giggles. “Hey, at least it’s better than arithmetic and imperial history.”

Your eyes enlarge in realization. “Oh, you’re preparing for the imperial exams.”

He scrunched his nose cutely, sticking out his tongue in distaste. “If only I could get out of it. I honestly don’t see the point.”

“You have no interest in obtaining a government position.” You state, recalling Master Lee’s words.

“Not in the slightest.”

The two of you end up chatting for the rest of the afternoon. You don’t actually learn that much about him because you find yourself talking more about yourself than asking him the questions you had formerly been curious about. Prince Jeon is just too good of listener that you don’t feel the need to hold back on anything. He’s not judgmental, and he seems to always know the right thing to say, which has never been the case with a single soul you’ve had the honor of speaking to. You have honestly never met anyone this easy to open up to, not that you had any secrets to hide or anything, but it was just like conversing with a friend you always wished you had, one who genuinely enjoyed your anecdotes and complaints about life as a princess, no matter how stupid they were.

“And so I told my mother that she stole my necklace, even though she didn’t.” You feel nonsensical revealing such an embarrassing story that painted you in such ugly light, but it was freeing to finally get it off of you chest after so many years. “Petty, right?”

Jungkook pauses in consideration. “Petty, but understandable. I mean, she only visited you to receive gifts, and she didn’t even want to be friends with you. Of course you had to find some way to get your mother to stop inviting her over.”

“Exactly!” You exasperate, finally feeling validated. “And here I thought I would never be forgiven for my sins.”

Your outburst makes him laugh. You were about to join him until you feel the side of your shoe break. Looking down, you see the whites of your sock poking through the silken fabric and the sole flapping down when you lift your foot.  

“My mother is going to kill me.” You groan. “You would think the shoemaker would choose more durable material for the royal family.”

“I guess he didn’t anticipate the princess being on her feet for hours.”

You look around to gauge how far you are from the palace; mentally calculating how much more damage you could do if you decide to hobble back on one foot. The summer garden wasn’t that far from the outer walls, perhaps you could make it back with clean socks if you are careful. Only that would probably take double the amount of time, and a glance at the sky tells you the sun is quickly inching closer and closer to the horizon.

Jungkook senses your contemplation. “If you allow it, I can carry you back,” He offers.

You turn to stare at him in disbelief, sensing your cheeks heating up at the thought. “C-carry me?”

He nods as if it was the most normal circumstance to be in, and it only makes your heart pound faster.

“I’m r-really h-heavy though.” You stutter, swallowing the saliva that had built in your mouth.

“I’m really strong though” He smirks, tilting his head suggestively.

You almost choke at his gesture. “I- I m-mean, ok-”

You aren’t even allowed to finish your sentence before he sweeps you off your feet bridal style. Holding your breath and squeezing your eyes shut, you can feel the firm muscles of his arms on the back of your thighs and curving around your back. Swinging your arms around his neck in fear of falling off, you pray that he can’t hear how loud the thumping in your chest is.

“So tell me about the time you purposely got sick just to skip class.”  

“Oh god, you really want to know the details?” You feel the knots in your stomach loosen and your heart slowing down. Either he can tell that you’re nervous, or the part about him knowing exactly the right thing to say is so true it’s uncanny, you decide it’s better to not question it.

The sun was beginning to set, making you wonder where the time had gone. If only all of your private lessons passed by this quickly you’d really be set. Lost in your thoughts and wishes, you continue your stories as he carries you securely all the way back.

…  

You end up meeting Prince Jeon in the garden many more times after that. Spending most of your time chatting, over anything and everything, or just strolling around in silence enjoying each other’s company.

The garden hadn’t changed in all the years you played in it when you were younger, but being here with someone you were slowly falling in love with was an entirely new experience. You could never get enough of that feeling of being with him, listening to his voice tell you words you didn’t even know you wanted to hear, meeting his gaze and catching glimpses of the way he looked at you as if you were the prettiest girl in the world.

You still remember the first time he suggested sneaking down to the village, dressed in commoner’s wardrobe consisting of ragged pants and a brown robe much like the one you had seen him sport the first night you met him.

“No peeking” You warn, looking to make sure he’s looking the other way before you undress.

“I won’t,” He assures with his back still facing you.

You had quickly removed your silken robe to put on the scruffy brown one, glad that it fit well enough to not look like stolen clothing.

“Now we are both commoners.” He giggles, eyes crinkling at the edges.

And just like that, you sneak out of the palace without the knowledge of the royal guards or the maids responsible for having their eyes on you. It’s a short trip once you get past the assorted gardens and the spacious homes of the nobles that encircle the palace just outside the impenetrable stonewalls.

You had only ever captured glimpses of these kinds of villages through the curtain of your horse drawn carriage on those rare instances you traveled for royal affairs, mostly to accompany your father on his visits other states. You had never imagines one day walking along a busy street, exploring the endless commodity stalls and restaurants clustered along cobblestone roads packed with people.

It was thrilling, seeing so many new things and tasting food you’re sure you aren’t allowed to eat, to go where you wanted and not worry about conducting yourself the way you have been told to all your life. You felt uninhibited, and you absolutely loved it.

You loved laughing so hard your belly hurt. You especially loved watching Jungkook’s eyes light up when he found something exciting to show you and his smile when you react in an equally fascinated way. You loved hearing his laughter ring through the air that embraces you, the look on his face when he puts something delicious in his mouth and subsequently offers some for you to try, and his enthusiastic voice when he spots a place he’s sure you’ll like, which you always do. And most of all, you loved the way he intertwined your hands as if proving to the universe that they were meant to remain that way, forming a perfect pair like the sun and the moon. He would hold one to you tightly, leading you through the streets of the crowded village and making sure you were never separated, making sure you were always together.

Everything felt too good to be true, and just when you thought life as a princess was finally starting to become tolerable with the aid of these escapades; you are proven to have spoken too soon.

…

It’s always when things are steadily going well in your life that people have to come and ruin it.

Your future marriage was the one subject you despised more than calligraphy class, and leave it to your mother to guilt trip you with mentions of your responsibility as the daughter of the emperor and how hard your father has worked and will work to build an even stronger empire. So of course you are obligated to agree to whomever she deems the best arrangement for the sake of your ruling family, even if that person was someone you had never met. You had avoided it for as long as you could, but being at the age you were, it was only a matter of time before the agreement had to be settled.

“You’re still going down to that garden to play?” You’re mothers voice rings across the empty hallway just as you were about to leave the palace. You hear her exhale loudly, and you were not in the mood to deal with her.

“It’s one of my favorite places.” You defend, feeling a bit annoyed at her attitude towards you and the things you loved, although you should be used to it by now.

“You’ll never grow up, will you?” She shakes her head powerlessly, acting like she wasn’t one of the main reasons you felt the need to escape in the first place.

“Nope” You answer, running off and allowing your legs to carry you faster than they normally do, wanting nothing more than to get out of that prison of a palace, that life you wished you were never born into.

You try to block out the thoughts of the conversation you had had with her the night before as you race to the usual meeting spot, almost bursting into tears when you see the only person you ever really want to see.  

“Jungkook!” You shout as you jump into his arms, relishing in the manner he lifts and twirls you around in the air so effortlessly.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, when he senses something is not right.

“I, umm, have something to tell you…” You swallow, trying to figure out the best way to break the news. After all, he of all people deserves to know. “My marriage arrangement has been settled.”

There’s a suffocating pause.

“And you’ve agreed to it?” He doesn’t look at you directly, choosing to instead stare blankly at the blooming flowers on the ground.

You search for signs of disappointment, almost in desperation, but find his countenance impossible to read.

“I had to…I’m of age...” You murmur, swallowing thickly.

“Is it some old king who has offered your father his land in exchange?” His voice is stiff, and you can see his jaw clench.  “Or perhaps command of his army?”

“Are you implying my parents would throw me under the bus for the sake of the empire?” You glare at him more sharply than you intend to, feeling your blood start to boil.

He looks up to meet your eyes. “I’m not saying that’s what I’m saying… but that’s exactly what I’m saying.” He inhales heavily. “What’s the point in being the emperor’s eldest daughter if you can’t even make your own decisions?”

“The point is, I have a choice…” You swallow tautly, quickly losing confidence in your own statement. It wasn't a complete lie, but anyone even remotely familiar with the imperial system would know that royal weddings are for the sole purpose of keeping peace between the warring states. Only a fool would believe personal preference was ever taken into account, even if one was the emperor’s eldest daughter and crown princess.

“To choose among those already chosen?” His words aren’t in any way mocking, though you had expected them to be based on how he’s expressed his opinions so far. His tone is rather despondent, and you find it difficult to determine what his stance on the matter is. He doesn’t sound like he cares, in fact, why should he? But at the same time, his expression tells a different story.

“I’ve already chosen Yifan from the State of Wu.” Now you are actually lying. You avoid his gaze as the memory of how your mother had convinced you to agree to the arrangement on the fact that relations between your father’s empire and the State of Wu have always been rocky at best.

“The Prince of Wu, huh?” Prince Jeon nods, staring blankly at the ground and refraining from commenting further.

You cross your arms, unsatisfied with his partial response that you don’t even know what to do with. “What? Is he not a good choice?”

He looks up. “Oh no, no. I have nothing against your…choice…” He walks over to examine the old willow tree by the pond, pretending to be partially distracted which only elevates your annoyance at his evasiveness. “He just doesn’t seem like your…type…”

You smirk at his last sentence. “And how would you know what my typeis?” You counter in the same tone as you walk over to grab his attention.

He turns around just as you sneak up behind him and almost knocks you backwards in the process, but he slings his arm around your waist just before you stumble. “Someone’s who’s not going around collecting concubines.” He flashes you another one of his amused smiles and you can feel his warm breath flutter over your parted lips.

You had heard rumors of Prince Wu’s promiscuous activities, but you didn’t know word had spread beyond the boundary of maid’s gossip.

You groan in defeat, realizing he had seen right through you from the beginning. “There’s nothing I can do about it.” You reveal the truth in a dejected murmur, too embarrassed to look him in the eyes.

There’s a long pause and you fear that he really doesn’t care enough to comfort you anymore, but when you look up to meet his soft gaze that had never left you, you’re unable to move an inch.

“Run away with me.” His hold around your waist is steady, and his eyes are so sincere you forget to breathe.

Your mouth drops open at his statement, at loss for words or any kind of response for that matter.

“There are lands beyond this empire, magnificent places where you and I can be free from all of this that we have no say over.” He gives you a firm, confident squeeze, eagerness written all over his features. “Wouldn’t you like that as well?” He adds in a more tender manner.  

“R-Run away?” You repeat, slowly slipping out of his embrace in an attempt to clear your mind because god knows you can’t think straight when his lips are mere centimeters from your face looking so luscious and soft.

“We can leave at dawn,” He asserts, placing his hands on each side of your shoulders and forcing you to look him in the eyes. The sunlight reflecting off his glassy pupils is enough to convey his longing for you to say yes, and in that moment, you can’t stop yourself from doing so even if you wanted to because truth be told, he could’ve proposed to jump off a cliff together and you would gladly accept.

…

The following morning happens in a blur.

Jungkook comes for you exactly as he had said, at dawn when the first light of the daybreak sun has barely emerged above the treetops. It's dark, and you are not entirely awake. Everything is delivered in hushed voices and whispers of encouragement. You remember your frenzied thoughts, the torrent of worries and questions that spin in your head. They do not plan on slowing down anytime soon, but Jungkook’s grip on your had is the only sedative you need. It's an unspoken promise to protect you, to never let you go.

And that is more than enough to prevent you from looking back. Not when the sunlight finally hits the palace walls, not when it cascades over the summer garden like a sheet of gold, and not even when the last sights of your former home disappears in the distance.

“Will you miss it?” Jungkook’s voice is soft as you continue to stare at the path in front, not realizing you hadn’t said a word to him since the two of you snuck out of the capital. It must have been hours, and he hadn’t disturbed the silence until now, giving you much needed space to let this all sink in.

“I don’t know.” You answer truthfully, still trying to make out what you were feeling. It wasn’t that easy to figure out. You had never done something so daring, so unplanned, so…borderline insane. You couldn’t possibly feel nothing, but would you really miss a place you had always wanted to leave?

“I will” He exhales. “I’ll miss my family, my room, going hunting with my father, the only place I ever knew…”

“So you regret it already?” You cut in, confused by his confession.

He shakes his head, smiling as he searches in your eyes. “I don’t regret any of this.” He holds up your interlinked hands, giving you a tight squeeze. “I never will.”

There’s an uplifting firmness in his tone, full of hope and life, and it makes you certain you won’t ever regret any of this either.

Jungkook had packed enough food to last until the two of you make it to the next village, according to the map he had on hand. You hadn’t even thought of the preparations he had made for this journey, but judging by all the things he was carrying, this was far from a last minute decision.

“You made this yourself?” You examine the flower shaped rice cakes in the small tin box, studying the intricate details and wondering how he managed to make something so beautiful.

“It’s probably nothing compared to what the royal cook makes, but everything tastes good when you’re hungry right?” He takes a bit and you follow suit.

The sweetness of the pastry engulfs your taste buds, making you gasp. “They’re delicious!” You compliment with your mouth full, blushing when he smiles as your delight and gazes lovingly into your eyes.

It is not long before you are back on your feet, making your way along the trail. The path winds into the forest, making it difficult to see the end, not that you could tell if it even had one. You were aware the two of you were walking on an incline, knowing that an impenetrable mountain range acted as a fortress around the capital city. They always looked so far away from atop the palace walls at the watchtower, so majestic and foreboding. You would’ve never imagined you’d one day be hiking up them like this.

“This is going to be a long trip, isn't it?” You sigh heavily, already feeling your legs getting sore. You had never walk for this long, let alone treaded up mountains. You vaguely wonder how Jungkook can carry everything he is and not feel tired.

“I prefer to call it a quest.”

You burst into laughter. “A quest?”

“Sounds more fun that way” He grins.  

“How do you know all of this?” You’re suddenly hit with the urge to inquire, having forgotten to ask him how he had planned such a big move.

“All of what?” He smiles playfully, verging on mischievous.

“About the lands beyond my father’s empire.” You gesture to the endless plains below, the farmlands and rice paddies, all the way to where the celestial sky meets the earth. “Ever since I was young, my mother had always told me all the lands beneath this sky belonged to my family, or at least will eventually once all the states are united.”

You hear him chuckle lightly. “I read about it once. In a book I found in the forbidden library. Don’t ask how I got there. I was five and there was a secret passage.” He grins to himself as he recalls the foggy memory.

“And ever since then, you’ve wanted to run away?”

“Oh, no” He shakes his head, laughing even harder. “I was way to scared to do that…” He falls silent. “…until I met you…”

…

Days pass so naturally, you lose track of time.

The mountains are endless, but the world is breathtaking. You visit quint little villages with children running around, bustling towns full of goods from across the land, and quite farms that extend for miles on end. You travel through various forest filled with the unique scents of varying flora, past grasslands that ripple in the wind, along rivers leading to vast lakes and spectacular waterfalls, witnessing the raw beauty that had been denied to you all your life; places you would’ve never gotten to see had you not chosen to run away with him, and for that you are already eternally grateful.

Sometimes you find him observing the wild flowers on the side of the road, braiding their stems together and creating colorful bracelets that he’s always ecstatic to gift you. Most of all, you liked to watch him when he didn’t know you were there, admiring the care and concentration he pours into anything he does. You’ve memorized the way his eyebrows are knitted and pupils are trained on the object in his hands, almost able to feel the force of his devotion even as a bystander.

You had never seen a man take the time to create something so delicate, something that required so much patience to come to fruition. Your brothers and all the royal men you’ve met in your life had glorified activities such as sword fighting, archery, and horseback riding while poking fun of weaving and braiding as things only suited for women and the weak. But here you were presented with a man who has proven his strength time and time again take part in such a meticulous act while genuinely enjoying the process.

You’ve grown up learning that men were aggressive, controlling and assertive, but Jungkook was affectionate, compassionate, and gentle. He is the rain that showers the earth with love in the form of liquid crystals, the sun that rises each morning without fail, the soft wind that whispers secrets in your ear. He is an open book that invites you to read and turns out to be a story you can never forget.  

You are lying in his arms late one evening, hidden under the arbors of giant trees, when a random thought strikes you.

“Are we any different from criminals now that we’ve essentially broken the law?”

Jungkook hums softly. “Well, I am not a prince anymore, and you are not a princess.”

“We are just commoners then?” You draw circles on his chest, calmed by the motion of his breathing.

“Hmm, I think lost stars would be a more accurate description.”

“Lost stars?”

He points at an opening between the branches, exposing the sky that is now a dark expanse dotted with gems. It’s a view you had never spent enough time looking at, but now that you are, it’s mesmerizing.

“They are so far apart, and yet from here, they look like they are right next to each other, mingling in a place that would be empty without their light.” He turns to cradle you in his arms, an action you are more than willing to welcome.

His body is so warm that you didn’t realize how cold you were until his skin came into contact with yours. Your eyelids are heavy, and you have to fight the slumber that is trying to overcome you. You want to stay awake, to listen to his soothing voice tell you more about the stars, but it’s a battle you cannot win.

Your last thought is not tainted by the fear that he might be gone the next morning because you know you will wake up in his arms. You don’t think you’ll ever be more certain of anything.

…

The cool blue sky merging with the warm glow of the orange sunset is a color combination engraved in your heart.

Along with the mountains casting shadows over the grasslands and the sound of roaring waterfalls that never falter, it is a continuous reminder that this moment had not stilled and that the world is still in motion. Time is flowing like the stream that weaves through the valley, and your heart has never felt so full.

You let your eyes settle on the man standing next to you, his lips glistening from the waning light, hair ruffling in the breeze. He is engrossed by the scenery, but you are enchanted by the sunset reflected in his eyes.

It almost makes you feel guilty for not fully appreciating the beauty that surrounds you in a moment as rare as this, but he is too captivating, the way his features fully capture the essence of the splendor you have soaked in for the past few weeks.

Tracing along the outline of his profile, your breath hitches when he suddenly turns to catch you staring at him. His lips curve upwards matching the dreamy look in his eyes and the faint flush of his cheeks.

You forget to take your next breath as he leans in, irises previously reflecting the sun now reflecting the most dazzling image of you.  

“May I?” He whispers, his lips already lightly brushing yours.

You nod, closing your eyes when he presses his lips deeply against yours, sending shock waves running up your body. You can feel his hands secure your waist, making sure you don’t lose your balance. There is no urgency in his movement, no unhinged desire displayed by his tongue, but instead the action is coated with a tenderness that speaks of unbroken promises. It’s calm like the sunset that was slowing fading, flickering like the stars that were gradually appearing, and delicate much like the way he braids flowers.  

And it is there on the edge of a cliff overlooking the land beneath the earth’s sky, that you share your first and last kiss with Prince Jeon Jungkook.

…

Maybe you had underestimated the power of your father’s army, or maybe this was fate’s way of punishing you for breaking the rules.

You can feel his hand gripping yours as the two of you run as fast as your legs can carry you, and you know he can get away if you just let go, if you just stopped and turned yourself in. The imperial soldiers were really only after you, and maybe if you gave in now, they would spare Prince Jeon’s life and let him flee.

“J-Jung-Kook” You croak between your heavy breathing and your quick glances to check if the men on horseback were closing in. You allow your hold on his hand to loosen.

“I- know what you’re-thinking” He says, gripping your hand even tighter, preventing you from making the sacrifice you had been mulling over.

His words are reassuring, but there’s an undertone of desperation that hints at something more. You don’t have the time or concentration to figure out what it is, but your ears are thankfully sharp enough to pick up his last plea.

“Please, never let go of me” It’s barely a whisper, and you almost think you are hallucinating when you see him turn to set his eyes on you one last time. Those glassy orbs never fail to make your heart skip a beat, upturned lips unfitting of the situation you were in, but nevertheless providing the exact kind of comfort you need.

It’s a kind of smile you hadn’t seen on him before, one that isn’t easy to decipher because it wasn’t making an appearance due to joy or relief or even for the purpose of soothing the tension in your chest. Instead, its manifestation makes you feel a sense of familiarity that does not stem from however long you’ve known him, but more….

More…

What is it?  

…

...

“What happened to him?”

“Hmm?”

“The prince” Namjoon clarifies.

“Oh, he…” You see a flash of red, the sound of horse hooves thumping against the ground, the shouts of men on horseback, arrows zipping through the air, and a deafening cry of pain. “He and I lived happily ever after.” You force yourself to smile, despite knowing that it’s a lie.

Namjoon remains still, and you’re afraid he read past your fabrication. “That’s nice.” He murmurs, smiling to himself and looking at the ground.

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. It’s become a habit of yours-convincing yourself to believe in something you know didn’t happen. And it’s not that you weren’t a fan of sad endings, in fact, you’ve always enjoyed stories that made you cry because they were always more memorable that way. But knowing that it was he who met a tragic end was just too…heartbreaking.

“Is it enough to know he only exists in your mind?”

Namjoon’s abrupt question echoes through the lab and disturbs your silent thoughts. You look up to see that he is on his computer; analyzing your brain recordings from the session you just came out of. It takes you a moment to register and come up with a proper response, but you manage to form an honest answer.

“I’ve been convincing myself it is for years.” You exhale fondly, reminded of how hard it was for you to accept the truth and how it still lives as embroidered scar in the center of your heart. The fact that he doesn’t exist is something you’re glad you finally came to terms with because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to do what you do now.

In the past, the thought of him not being real was painfully depressing, leaving you distraught every time you thought about him and how wonderful it would be if he existed in reality. At one point, instead of making you grateful that you could at least feel that sort of happiness in your mind, it became draining and upsetting, always being tangled in wishes that would never come true. It was a difficult time, being in your mid-twenties, so lost in life, both in terms of your career and family. With everyone around you trying to give you unasked for advice, none of it being even remotely helpful because no one understood that you didn’t really want any of that.

And there you were, longing for someone you could barely put a name or face to. It’s ridiculous to think about now, but it’s a past you can’t deny. Luckily, you’ve found your way to a healthier state of mind.

“Do you ever wonder if he’s someone you might’ve met in real life?” Namjoon has turned to peer at you now, expectantly waiting for a response.

You pause, holding his gaze for a bit longer than usual. “I can’t think of a single person he’s even similar to. He’s too perfect.” You chuckle to yourself, feeling like a teenage girl talking about her crush.

“I mean, even in dreams, do you ever see people that you’ve never seen in real life?” Namjoon furrows his brows. “There has to be a source that all of this stems from.”

“My childish fantasies?” You continue laughing, and even Namjoon is forced to smile, shaking his head.

“Tell me more about it.” He walks over and pulls up a chair in front of you, folding his hands and placing them gentle on his lap as if he were waiting to listen to a lengthy story.

“About what? About him?” You cock a brow, finding it peculiar that he’s so interested in your adventures, but he always has been.

“About everything.”

You lay back down on the metal surface, staring at the ceiling. “When I’m in these sessions, I’m not consciously aware that I am and that none of it is real. I meet him for the first time every single time, and yet there is no incongruity in my mind or my memories. It’s like everything is wiped clean, and I start off on a blank slate. I just get this visceral feeling of familiarity and it’s so vague and weak, I just ignore it.” You purse your lips, digging for the right description. “The series of events are already planned, and I can’t change anything even though it feels like I have control over my decisions. I’m actually just living through a story that is already written. There are sessions where I only spend a single day with him others where it spans over the course of years, and yet each one has never felt short of a lifetime.”

“Does he look and act the same every time?”

You shake your head, closing your eyes and trying desperately to recall his face, but you can’t see him. It’s a blank canvas.

“He different depending on the story…but there’s just something about him that doesn’t change. And I can’t describe what it is, but it’s the reason I can recognize him in every scenario no matter what character he plays.” You sigh. “Well, I guess he always looks more or less the same. Maybe with a different hair color, or different clothes perhaps…” You chuckle under your breath, attempting to conjure that heart fluttering feeling you get when you see his physical appearance. “Am I superficial for making him absolutely beautiful?”

The corner of Namjoon’s lip twitches upward as he shakes his head. “No, not at all.”

“But, I think…I think I could recognize him even if I were blind.” You trail the patterns on the ceiling, zoning out ever so slightly. “He’s the only person that can hear me. And in the end it's always almost as if he knows, but at the same time it’s impossible for that to be true. And I know it’s just something that has to do with the way my brain constructs the whole scenario, but I just can’t seem to get over that look in his eyes. I know it’s not real, none of it is, but in that moment, he is the closest thing to reality.”

“What in reality is the closest thing to him then?” Namjoon’s question induces your vision to refocus.

“I don't know. There isn’t anything.” You answer without giving it much thought.

“Then tell me this, Professor Y/L/N,” He diverts his gaze to window overlooking the university campus; the colorful autumn leaves littering the lawns. “Can you accurately imagine a feeling you’ve never felt before?”

His inquiry catches you off guard. “Are you trying to convince me I’m wrong to believe the human mind is as boundless as it is?” You turn to face him.  

“No” He shakes his head. “I’m merely…curious. I find it fascinating that the subconscious mind has such powerful abilities…I also find it hard to believe that a women like you has remained single all these years.”

You can see the hint of rosiness staining his cheeks, but his expression speaks of nothing but admiration and respect. “I have long past those days of receiving such flattering comments. But thank you.”

He smiles widely, a pair of dimples forming where the rosiness once was.

...

[eyeodyssey]

Film Production Log #3

A frame from “The Death Of A Home″. What year is this? It’s been a long time coming that I finally got around to writing another one of these things. It’s three months into 2019 already and I hardly even noticed, made a rude awakening when I looked to the calendar to see that it went from 28 back to 1. With all that, it hit me that I hardly wrote about the progression of any of my current film projects in that period of time. I thought I had a rough idea of how the passage of time worked, as it turns out I know as little about a concept as abstract as time as I do about every other thing in life that defies explanation. There’s a reason why I simultaneously dread everything and nothing after all. I’ve written through many variants of this first paragraph beforehand, each draft starting off with the same “long time coming” comment, which gained further relevancy with each rewrite. Let’s go and cut this ongoing habit before it goes beyond simple procrastination into flat out absurdity.

A frame from “The Death Of A Home″. Like mentioned with the second production log, we spent most of the December of 2018 haphazardly preparing a forced move that we had to undergo with the sudden gentrification of our apartment at the time. This wasn’t the first time I faced the systematic Kafkaesque horror of gentrification. I was pissed, to say the least, and I did the only thing I could do, I documented it. With The Death Of A Home as it is currently, all the footage from the move itself has been compiled and made into a rough cut, adding up to my first proper feature length film at an hour and 12 minutes. The film is comprised of long shots, with scenes ranging from a crew of biohazard workers cleaning the basement of a black mold infestation that was never reported to the tenants to a sequence where long kept hand-painted furniture is forcibly discarded (tossed down a staircase into the back lot to lead to a rain of multicolored paint shards). The whole film will also be accompanied by a harsh noise soundtrack, I mostly have Merzbow stuff playing throughout as a placeholder. I’ll be shooting on the side some abstract visual sequences for the documentary, communicating certain details of our story that weren’t captured on film. I have a lot of ideas brewing for the mixed media techniques I could use for creating these images in a live action format, specifically ones that return to the sort of trash bag special effects that I used in my prior film concerning the subject of gentrification, Weightless Bird In A Falling Cage. Setting foot in the new apartment, the first thing we came to notice was the absolutely vacant house next to us. The building was completely abandoned with electricity still hooked up, looked like no one set foot there in years. Having it face the bedroom every day, with our constant visual subjection and time to contemplate we came to the conclusion that something was gonna happen to the building at some point. It was clearly the middle child to an estate that left it to rot. Just in time for when we wrapped up unboxing everything, the building caught fire. At first I didn’t pay much mind to the sound of sirens driving through (it’s an Atlanta custom). It eventually hit me that something wasn’t quite right when I looked to one of the windows to see bright red, Suspiria technicolor light shining through.

A frame from “Burning Fragments: Mode 3 - Winter 2019″. Did I go out to have a look? Of course, so did the rest of the neighborhood. Made an interesting meet your neighbor type of gathering, to say the least. I also brought my camera with me, and I came back with a metaphorical stack of raw footage along with a slow-cooked pair of lungs, the film is more important though. From that raw footage, I got the visual edit for the short Burning Fragments, a part of my seasonal “Mode” series that was first kicked off by Hard Drive and continued by my currently unreleased Factory Dreams. Burning Fragments is a montage of morbidly humbling sequences, from a roof visibly caving in through the smoking windows to medical staff cautiously carting out a stretcher, prepared for the worst case scenario. No one came out injured luckily, though I don’t mention that in the film (to keep up the haunting atmosphere). Power was cut to the building, the fire was put out and the street stunk of smoke for the next month. I thought it smelt like a smoked rib, one neighbor of ours said it smelt exactly like pot smoke.

A frame from “Factory Dreams: Mode 2 - Fall 2018″. Right around there was where we thought the story would end, but several days later the building went back up again. This time around I went to one of the firefighters to ask what started the fire in the first place. As it turned out this second eruption was from the ongoing work of someone who had a great disdain to a singular sofa in the abandoned building. The first fire was started off by the arsonist setting this certain sofa aflame, and the guy returned to the scene of the crime to incinerate it for good. Our friendly neighborhood sofa arsonist is still on the run to this day. Going into rapid-fire mode, some other noteworthy moments of the year so far include: OS updating, film editor street fighting, more OS updating, cool experimental film screenings (as seen in my documentary Moonlight Tunnel), one last OS update for good measure and discovering the new OS is as thought out as a tumble down a staircase.

Kafka’s Supermarket sorta ended up bunched between everything, seeing one quick, sporadic development at a time. The issue with actors still stands, gotta track down some people for the film to act in those pesky performed segments. It all goes smoothly until you’ve gotta spend the time and physical resources of other living, fleshy beings into your freaky unscripted cinematic daydreams. Around the end of February, I collaborated with local collage artists Steven and Cassi Cline to write the dialogue for the film, collage literature style. We took several different approaches when it came to fully fleshing things out, some were done as experimental writing games while others were the more familiar cut n paste technique. The script took a wide variety of resources, including the FBI documents printed from the internet archive, the prologue of a Georges Bataille philosophical text and a book on nuclear weapons. I was largely the supplier when it came to the process, while I do visual collage stuff often I’m less of a writer (both letter by letter and cut up source by cut up source). Readings of the literary collages will be interspersed throughout the film with an announcer who seems completely detached from the surreal nature of the scenes he describes. Burroughs’ approach for writing Naked Lunch aside, the primary source of inspiration for this detail comes from my memories of a radio clock that we had during my childhood. I would tune through channels with it searching for classical music, but most often I’d find news stations. Not knowing anything about politics at the time (being 5 to 6 years old and all), the nature of what was being discussed was completely alien to me. With how Kafka’s Supermarket is focused on the nightmarish distortion of everyday life in capitalist America, I felt it was necessary to recreate the atmosphere of those broadcasts that confused me all those many years ago. One detail that left the production hung for a significant amount of time, as minuscule as it may seem, was the masks the actors would be wearing. The visual style of Kafka’s Supermarket was adapted from my 2017 zine What Brought Me To This Point, an experiment in nihilistic writing that focuses on the mental state of a man with prosopagnosia and a non-specified mental illness. My general understanding of prosopagnosia at the time was admittedly limited, I had just heard of a condition where someone couldn’t recognize faces and something about the idea creatively resonated. From this, all the characters were designed with the same basic facial template, prioritizing the bare essentials of the human face with an emphasis on the uncanny. Kafka’s Supermarket further branches out this aesthetic in using it as a wider embodiment of the lack of individual personality in a capitalist state, where everything is selling to a set of categorized markets that represent the general populace.

A frame from “Kafka’s Supermarket”. The thing is, human heads aren’t structured like these figures I was drawing. I spent an absurdly long time contemplating how exactly I could recreate the look of these characters not only with a budget but with a budget without having it look too “store-bought” in a way. The main catch was I was going by realism and not surrealism. At that point, I briefly lost sight of what exactly I was doing. We all make mistakes. I brooded on how I could convincingly recreate an abstract illustration. It took until I started reading the screenplays of Kōbō Abe that sense hit me again when I questioned how it would be done in a theater production. That was when I remember that I’m making a non-narrative experimental film, not something like a superhero fan film where a certain level of suspension of disbelief is expected. Since then I plotted out an alternative that’s simultaneously more affordable than anything I was theorizing beforehand while also being more surreal and true to the theories and atmosphere behind Kafka’s Supermarket (and even it’s predecessor, What Brought Me To This Point). Since then I’ve found myself further experimenting with the fusion of film and theater, specifically the use of minimal props and images to convey a greater concept. I’ll be reposting cast calls for actors through the next several days, hoping for the best while I also simultaneously pester a nearby grocery store for permission to shoot a short sequence on their property. Productions like this are the ones that leave me realizing the oxymoronic nature in pursuing capitalist chains about the production of strictly anti-capitalist cinematic rhetoric.

A frame from “Empire Of Madness: A Wilderness Within Hell 2″. While juggling well more than a handful of personal projects (all the films mentioned earlier, a second chapter of Iron Logs and a harsh noise album experiment), I also convinced myself that I can get back into animation again. I was publicly tiptoeing around the idea of a second Wilderness Within Hell film for a while, and now it seems that it will likely be a thing with Empire Of Madness. It’s not really a direct sequel as much as it is a continuation of the style that was first started with Madhouse Mitchel. Set in the same age of industrial totalitarian inferno as Madhouse Mitchel, Empire Of Madness follows the life of Prometheus after his divine punishment for giving mankind knowledge. Having finally passed physical torture in the complete separation of his physical body, Prometheus wanders the Earth as an anomalous figure that assembles itself in a seemingly manufactured, mechanical nature. With pieces of his blood and flesh inherited by every man and woman with his given wisdom, he is inconsequently responsible for a curse put on all of humanity that destines man to collapse in paranoia and violence. Prometheus is shunned by everyone who crosses his path, seeing him as a sickly demon. Prometheus comes to realize that aside from his physical torture, the true act of divine punishment enacted on him will be the experience of having his own creation slowly destroy itself while it collectively tries to kill him.

A frame from “Empire Of Madness: A Wilderness Within Hell 2″. I’m simultaneously writing the film’s screenplay while I draw certain visual intensive scenes. Like I mentioned I’m still a bit rough around the edges with writing, so for this phase of production, I’ll actively study Kōbō Abe’s scripts and also the screenplays to an Akira Kurosawa film and Battleship Potemkin. I’ll still in a way aim more to minimalism with how certain things play out, with this series’ influences in Japanese guro art it’s more inclined to create a certain nightmarish atmosphere above all else. While Madhouse was largely anti-systemic rage, this film leans more to bleak existentialism. Bits of the soundtrack are already recorded, the main theme can currently be heard here. That’s about all I have to write for now. Now to wait another four months until I post anything text based on here again.

[rannadylin]

Lenneth Morelli, not a Watcher in Violet’s worldstate but a bit of a wild card whose Awakened memories might hold many a key to the odd goings-on in Citlatl; purveyor of puns and terrible keeper of secrets; a little shifty, a little sweet, a lot desperate at the moment but she does have quite a knack for survival and optimistic determination.

age: undefined???? she’s a fairly young wood elf but that still makes her older than all these Itzli siblings. Probably in her 50′s or 60′s.

ENFP

Rogue, drifter, and orphan

curious (relentlessly so, just ask Aloth. Or don’t ask him, Lenni has already used up his quota of questions to answer for the day), a bit reckless, desperate to cope with her recent Awakening and very relieved to be taken under Violet’s wing, so to speak

also really grateful for Aloth’s contributions to this impromptu Awakening support group

she’ll pretty much try anything once and that includes dozens of odd jobs, of varying degrees of legality, she’s worked to keep herself and her younger siblings fed since their parents died

her sister Briella, Bree for short, is 7 years younger and her brother Tullien, Tully for short, was 19 years younger than Lenn but died a few years after he was born from a fever that he might’ve caught from Lenneth while she herself was delirious with the fever and Bree was left to tend to them both

Lenneth was 19 when her mother died in childbirth with Tullien and she was 20 when her father drowned in the harbor, leaving the three children on their own

After Tully died the sisters drifted a while (Lenneth’s less legal odd jobs, and the fact that she’s really not that good a con artist, led to them often finding it necessary to leave town in a hurry and move on), throughout Rauatai and eventually across the sea to the Ixamitl Plains. In Tlanextic Briella found work at a tailor’s shop. Then she fell in love with the tailor’s son and got married and settled down. Lenni’s happy for her but a little at loose ends, no longer having a little sister to look after and provide for.

Shortly before our story, Lenneth was attempting to run a con in the temple of Eothas in Tlanextic, where she and her sister had settled, but while buttering up the rector, a prayer being recited triggered a memory that wasn’t hers -- her Awakening to her past life as Glynis, an Engwithan missionary to Ixamitl.

currently busy visiting temples in Citlatl in hopes of triggering more of Glynis’ memories since it’s become clear her past life had something to do with the magical shield called the Haven that recently lit up in a dome over the whole city of Citlatl

has an outrageous sweet tooth and has been gathering as much information about Citlatl confections as about her missing animancer and the origins of the mysterious Haven

My favorite scenes for her thus far in Soul and Shield: (they’re long! Lenni’s talkative... I’ll cut)

A minute passed, then another. Then Lenneth’s eyelids fluttered again, and with a gasp, she sat up, still clutching Aloth’s hand.

“My baby!” she croaked with the voice of a woman whose cries had for hours flown to Hylea under her midwife’s care. Panting for breath, she blinked slowly, looking around in bewilderment at the underground chamber. Her eyes met Aloth’s. She blinked once more, and then quietly asked, her voice fading back to its normal register, “Did...did I just have a baby?”

“You most certainly did not,” he answered with a wry half-smile, untangling his fingers from hers as her grasp finally relaxed. “But I think, perhaps…”

Her eyes went wide as she finished the thought. “Glynis did.”

“Here in this temple, I presume.”

She nodded with a distant look. “Yes. I think so. That triggered the memory?”

“It must have. I’m -- sorry; that looked...most intense.” He winced at the understatement.

Lenneth brought her hands together, rubbing out the tension of the muscles that had clung to him so long. “I only got glimpses, honestly. Thank you, Glynis dear, for sparing me the whole ordeal,” she added with her usual wild grin, and Aloth’s own muscles relaxed at this return to normalcy, or whatever passed for it with Lenneth. “Been a while since I assisted a birth, and I sure wasn’t expecting to go through it myself anytime soon.”

“Assisted?” Aloth’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait, you…”

“Worked for a midwife for a few weeks,” she shrugged. “Early after my parents died. Same one who delivered my baby brother, in fact. She...took pity on my sister and me when we were left to raise him on our own. Paid me a few teos for every delivery I’d help with.” A wistful smile crossed her face. “She used to tell us that since Mom’s soul became one of Hylea’s attendants after she died giving him birth, Tully was sacred to the Queen of Birds. That she’d watch over him all his life, because his mother had her ear.” Her smile fell. “I guess birds don’t live that long, though. Neither did he.”

Anselm? Lenneth thought desperately. Hi! Trouble! She dodged as one wizard’s magic missiles slammed into the cobblestones where she’d been standing, ducked and rolled as the second wizard loosed a cone of ice her way. From the marketplace, she heard a sudden commotion and glanced that way just long enough to see several more attackers closing in -- but behind them, several familiar faces. “Ha!” Lenneth cheered, then shrieked in pain as one of the wizards caught her in a ray of fire that went on burning even as she darted forward with her knives out, gritting her teeth against the pain, in hopes of stabbing at its source.

A pillar of light slammed into the female wizard, knocking her to the ground. The fire went on blazing. Lenneth leapt for the male wizard, who threw up some sort of flaming shield just as her knives reached him, leaving her burnt once again as she struck. Lenneth growled and danced to the side as he began an attack spell, but from behind her came a sudden bolt of arcane energy, knocking him off balance before he could finish casting. Fire be damned: Lenneth danced in and finished him off, feeling the heat of his shield once more and grimacing at the scent of the ends of her hair burning, along with a bit of the skin at her elbows where her bracers ended, probably -- but as the wizard dropped, so too did the ray of fire that had latched on to her. She stumbled back to see that the female wizard was caught in some sort of stasis field: perfect, excellent, the whole point of luring these people in to attack her was to capture one, right? So she turned back to the reinforcements -- both the enemy’s and her own -- that had turned up at the entrance of the alley.

They were fairly evenly matched, though it looked as if the other side had brought mostly casters this time: more wizards, what looked to be a priest wearing a symbol of Magran (great, more fire was all she needed now), and an orlan whose mace glowed with the same purple soul whip she saw now wreathing Anselm’s sword. But Lenneth’s reinforcements had multiplied to include a handful of Itzlis, Edér, and Xipil’s dog, who was now tearing into the throat of an enemy archer.

This might just work.

She kept to the shadows, taking opportunities to strike where it would do the most damage. She flung Nochtaca’s powdered chilis into the enemy cipher’s eyes, sending his mace off course just as it was about to slam into the back of Violet’s head. She tripped one of the wizards and was about to cut his throat, when all of a sudden the sky above lit up like noontide.

Everything seemed to slow.

Everything from the cobblestones below to the laundry lines strung overhead across the alley glittered in arcane light.

Lenneth glanced to Violet, thinking the priest had invoked some sort of Eothasian thing, but Violet looked as caught off guard as everyone else. Her hands were raised as she recited a battle prayer, but the look of resolution on her face slowly shifted to confusion when nothing much seemed to happen.

Leneth looked around to see the same confusion spreading among the enemy casters -- and Anselm, Aloth, Lottie, all baffled as their spells failed to take effect.

Lenneth looked up to the sky, not rosy at sunset as it should be but brighter than the dawn. It was...not the sky itself that glowed, she realized. And then the memory struck.

“By all the gods,” she gasped. “The Haven! Who invokes the Haven?” Visions overtook her: Citlatl, but smaller; temples, half-built; the light, powering up and spreading over the whole city, even the parts not built yet. But not like this. It was too much; it could not sustain such light. She shook her fist at heaven, blinded from within as the battle raged around her.

Until it was Lenneth herself who was being shaken, and she snapped out of the memory and looked down to see Violet peering at her in concern.

“It’s all right,” the little priest soothed. “It’s over. You’re all right, Lenneth.”

Lenneth gasped and crumpled to the stones at her feet, jostling one of the burns on her arm from the wizard’s attacks painfully against the ground as she landed in an awkward crouch. Violet knelt down with her as the rest of her allies gathered around.

Lenneth dared a look at the sky and saw it still glowing. Perhaps not as bright as before? Could she have imagined it? Whatever she had seen, something was still unnaturally bright. “What happened?” she whispered.

Violet arched an eyebrow. “I was hoping you might know something about that,” she said, “from what you said when it appeared.”

“What?” Lenneth scrunched her nose quizzically at the priest. “Me?”

“I wasn’t aware you spoke Engwithan,” said Violet, watching her very carefully.

Lenneth stared agape at her, trying to remember what she’d said. “Do I?” she finally squeaked. “Oh gods. Oh gods, is that what it is?”

Violet tilted her head up to Yolotli. “Did you recognize what Lenneth said?”

Yolotli frowned, crossed her arms, shook her head. “I wish! It wasn’t Katl, nor Aedyran, nor Eld Aedyran, nor Vailian. And I think I’d have at least recognized the sound of Rauataian even if I couldn’t tell what it meant, so scratch that off the list.”

“But I understood it,” the Watcher said with a slow smile. “The Haven.”

Lenneth’s eyes went wide, looking from Violet up to the sky. She thought for several long moments, trying to remember what she had shouted. The words were out of reach now, but the Haven -- yes, that was the gist of it. “Can we,” she began, trying and failing to get to her feet. Edér reached in and caught her, giving her a hand up and a shoulder to lean on once she was standing. “Thanks,” she said. “Can we...go home? There’s a lot I should tell you. But not here. And I’m famished.”

I’m close to finished with the next batch of chapters on Soul and Shield, my soon-to-be-novel-length longfic about my Watcher Violet’s post-PoE1 adventures back in her hometown in the Ixamitl Plains, but it’s been a while since the last update. So while I try to work out the next plot tangle for the chapter I’m currently writing, I’m taking a break to draw the cast again, and to highlight my favorite scenes for them in the story thus far along with details about their role in the story. Hopefully all to build a little momentum by the time story updates resume! :-D

Violet | Audie | Xipil | Yolotli | Anselm | Lenneth

[tintinnabulary]

Archeron Ambrosia

Chapter Four

AN: And now the long awaited fourth chapter. Sorry for the delay. Unfortunately, I had a family emergency that really threw my life through a loop for a bit, so I wrote this chapter, then realized I didn’t like parts of it, then forgot about it, then remembered it, then put it off, then today decided I HAD to finally get this shit out there. Hopefully you all enjoy it. As usual, leave comments and messages and such and let me know if you want to be tagged in future chapters!

I do not own the characters, or the songs "Dream" by Priscilla Ahn, or "Mara's Song" by Mandy Harvey!

Masterlist

Nesta struggled to put her key into the front door of her store in the dim, early morning light. Cursing and fumbling with keys and her hot coffee, Nesta near screamed at the sudden unexpected burst of light. Nesta straightened quickly, squared her shoulders, then squinted against the light to see who held it.

“Look all you want, sweetheart, but eventually you’ll have to buy it.” Fury laced her veins as she recognized the voice.

“I’m just trying to locate the tiny man with a big ego addressing me.” Laughter licked at her skin, coursing through her veins and lacing with the fury, giving Nesta a new and unfamiliar sensation. God, why did he have to sound like that?

“Oh, sweetheart, there is nothing tiny about me.” She scoffed and another torrent of laughter broke out. She reached out to the light source, lowering it to get a better view at the man behind it.

Cassian stood in front of Nesta, his hair pulled up into a bun, pieces falling and cascading down around his sweat-soaked face. Black basketball shorts hung low on his hips, with black running shoes on his feet. His shirt through--that was nowhere to be found. Defined muscles covered every visible inch of body, with swirling black tattoos covering his chest, arms, abs, and over that was an attractive sheen of sweat. A bead trickled down the defined abs, trailing along one of the more defined black lines of his ink, and Nesta fought the urge to lick her lips and think about where that drop was heading.

Instead, she pushed his light towards the keyhole of her store and went back to her task of opening the shop.

“Why are you even here?” Nesta asked, trying to get her mind off the nakedness of the confident, smug male at her side.

“To be your knight in shining armor, of course.” Nesta looked up and glared at him. He laughed again (why does he have so much carefree joy?) and said “Okay. I like to rise early. Get in a run and a workout before I start my appointments for the day. And I like to have plenty of time to make breakfast.” That answer was so...adult. So unexpected. “What about you?”

“I got an order in yesterday for a huge wedding dessert tower. It’s for next week on Friday, so I needed to get started on some of the tart shells, cakes, pies. Things like that. Mini desserts take more time. So, I wanted to get a jump start on them.” Nesta finally unlocked the door and stepped into the shop, flipping on the lights and beginning to walk to the back. Cassian started to follow her, and Nesta reached out at him with a halting hand. A blush spread lightly over her cheeks as his hard, sweaty chest made contact with her hand.

“What?” he asked, cocky confusion blooming on his face.

“You’re gross,” she said, pulling her hand away. “I mean, sweaty and near naked. You can’t be in here. That’s a health code violation.”

“Well, say I go run next door and shower. Would you let me hang out with you then? Help you bake, and then maybe make us breakfast?” Cassian seemed nervous, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Nesta looked at him, calculating and debating. “Okay. Get clean, and be prepared to do everything I say.”

He broke into a giant grin and gave a sharp salute. “Aye, aye captain. I’ll be back in thirty.” He spun quickly on his heel and bolted out the door.

Nesta took a deep, calming breath, drank a long chug from her coffee cup, then made her way to the back. Nesta pulled out her phone and placed it on a music docking station on a counter in the kitchen. She pulled up her baking playlist, (complete with  Yiruma, Sleeping At Last, Bon Iver, He Is We, and Mandy Harvey) and as the first notes from Mandy Harvey’s “Try” began, Nesta began moving her way around the kitchen. She preheated the ovens, and began pulling out ingredients. Butter, flour, brown sugar, vanilla--all the needed ingredients,  and her measuring cups and bowls, all soon sat across her work station. She began humming along to songs, losing herself in the familiarity of baking, and soon finding herself singing along--forgetting entirely about her guest for the morning.

~*~*~*~*~

Cassian showered as quickly as possible, not wanting to give Nesta a chance to change her mind about letting him join her. His mind raced with what he could cook for her, wanting to impress her with his cooking skills as much as she did him with her baking.

When he climbed out of the shower, he quickly grabbed jeans and a plain red t-shirt. He placed his hair back up in a bun, hoping it would stay out of the way while he worked beside her. He ran down the back stairwell from the tattoo shop (they put in a shower after a few too many drunk people stumbled from the bowling alley and into their shop, and unloaded themselves on the floors and the artists), and moved quickly through locking back up the shop and into the bakery. The bells were still tied to the side, so nothing announced his arrival. He was about to do just that when he was surprised by a gentle, confident voice singing from the back.

I asked God who I’m supposed to be

The stars smiled down at me

God answered in silent reverie

I said a prayer and I fell asleep

I had a dream

That I could fly from the highest tree

I had a dream

Cassian walked closer to the kitchen, hiding a bit beside the door to see if it was truly Nesta singing. He saw her, moving with grace and ease around her kitchen space, slowly pouring flour into a wet batter mixture, and her hair lightly slipping out of her intricate braided updo. Flour marked her right cheek, and it was already scattered across her half apron. She lightly blew at the hair in her face as she continued folding in her flour into the mixture. Then, her mouth opened  and Cassian heard her soft and alluring voice begin again.

Now I’m old and feeling grey

I don’t know what’s left to say

About this life I’m willing to leave

I lived it full and I lived it well

There’s many tales I’ve lived to tell

I’m ready now, I’m ready now

I’m ready now

To fly from the highest wing

I had a dream

“So, you bake and you sing?” Nesta jumped in surprise at his voice, knocking some of the batter out of the bowl with her spatula.

She cleared her voice, trying to regain some composure. “Only when I’m alone. Usually when I’m baking.”

“I don’t know why you don’t sing anywhere else. You’re really good.” Cassian casually placed his hands inside his pockets and leaned against the door frame.

“Well, thanks for intruding upon a private moment, not properly announcing your presence, and then causing me to waste batter.” Her eyes met Cassian’s, and there was a calculated annoyance lighting them. “The least you can do is make yourself useful and make this breakfast you mentioned. I got most of the stuff I trust you with done already.”

“You couldn’t wait for me?”

“The wedding is next Friday. I wait for no one when I need something done.”

Cassian pushed himself off the wall and moved to the stove. Nesta had already set out two pans, so he set them to the correct temperature and moved to the fridge, gathering his needed ingredients. He set himself to work, moving via muscle memory, and racing his brain on what to talk about.

There was something about Nesta that unnerved him. He didn’t mean to offend her by listening to her sing, but he couldn’t resist. She had a quiet, strong confidence that he was sure could quickly turn into a fiery rage if he didn’t watch himself. But maybe that was what he wanted. She was too together. Too closed off. Too in her head. Maybe if he pushed at her buttons, she’d unravel enough to have fun. To relax.

“Don’t think so hard, or your face will get stuck like that.” Cassian turned to Nesta after realizing his face was hyper focused on the egg dish in front of him. She was staring at him from across her baking counter, cup of coffee being raised to her lips and eyebrow raised.

“Eggs are obviously the most complicated dish.”

“I’m sure your brain isn’t used to working quite this hard.”

“Sometimes it’s the simplest things that take the most focus.”

“Only simple people find simple things complex.”

“Maybe you just overcomplicate things because you can’t let yourself be simple.”

“Maybe I’m just too advanced for you to handle.” Cassian removed his pan from the heat, and leaned against the island Nesta worked on.

“Oh, Nesta, you’re not as complex as you think.” he flashed her a smile, then reached across the way, wiping at the flour on Nesta’s cheek. A light blush dusted across her nose, and Cassian couldn’t help but think about ways to make that blush deepen.

“Finish cooking.” she grabbed an ice cream scoop and pulled a tray from under the counter. “Once these go in the oven, I’ll have twenty minutes to eat. Let’s hope your simplified dish is enough for my overcomplicated tastes.” And with that, her eyes looked away, and Cassian sensed his temporary dismissal. He grinned at her, then turned back to the stove. Suddenly, his brain clicked on what she said.

“You said the wedding is next Friday?” Nesta looked up from her mixing bowl and nodded. “It wouldn’t happen to be a beachside ceremony with the reception at the Velaris Winery, would it?”

She blinked twice before asking, “How did you know?”

A grin split Cassian’s face. “Because I’m going to it. The bride, Amren, she’s like a sister to me. My brothers and I have known her for years. All of us are going.”

“Well, my sisters and I will be there, delivering the desserts and making sure nothing goes wrong with the desserts or with their personal cake.”

“Well it saves me from finding a date for the occasion.”

Nesta coughed in shock. “Why would my working the wedding mean you don’t have to find a date?”

He smiled at her over his shoulder. “Because I’m obviously going to have to ask the most beautiful girl their to dance. And if you’re there, then any date I find will be instantly jealous.”

Nesta said nothing, and Cassian glaced casually at her. When he noticed  she was trying to hide a blush, he figured just this once he would be a gentleman and not call it out.

A quiet content settled in, and they both finished at their tasks. When it came time for plating, Nesta walked to a cabinet, opened the door for plates, and went to grab her tray and move it into the oven. The synchronicity they moved in seemed like a dance, a gentle caress of long friends who were in a comfortability that came with time--only hours after meeting, Cassian noted. He plated the bacon, tomato, and cheese omelettes he made, and walked to the work table on the side where Nesta was putting forks and paper towels. She went to the sink and washed her hands as Cassian sat, grabbing at the salt and pepper and dusting his own food. Nesta’s humming as she washed made Cassian pay closer attention to the song playing.

Come walk my friend with me

To a place that we always dreamed

You will know how it feels

To be right where you’re supposed to be

“Sing it, Nes.”

“Don’t call me Nes.” she quickly responded, quite matter of factly. “And you already caught me once. You’ll have to do something pretty special to earn it a second time.”

“Challenge accepted.” Nesta sat down at the table, and picked up her fork and knife. She raised her eyes at him, and he responded with a smile. “You can’t get rid of me that quickly.”

“Maybe food poisoning will get me before I have to see you try.”

Cassian threw his head back and laughed. “At least try it before you kick me to the curb.”

Nesta tentatively took a bite, then couldn’t help the light moan that escaped her. Cassian held onto that sound and tucked it safely into a corner of his mind.

“What did you do to this?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Tell me.”

“No way,” his smile grew. “If I tell you, there will be no reason to keep me around.”

“It’s the only reason to keep you around.”

“I’m also a looker.”

“Only when you’re shirtless.”

“I can always be shirtless, if that’s what you want.”

“I think that’s what you would want.”

“I would love to see you shirtless all the time, Nes.”

“Don’t call me Nes.” She glared up at him, and silence settled in once again. Lyrics again floated into Cassian’s mind.

Day by day we journey on

Through the storm and through the calm

Day by day we’ll find a way

Together

“I’ll get there, Nesta. Don’t worry. You won’t be rid of me any time soon.”

Cause all I see is you holding me, forever

“You’re a little too sure of yourself for my liking, but we’ll see where this goes.” Nesta settled back into her food, allowing the silence, but this time it was charged. Cassian let a smile rest on his face, then went to eating his own food. He couldn’t help but think that he was in trouble with this one.

All I see is you holding me, forever

Tag List: @tragically-broken, @bluephoenix222, @alicethelonerabbit, @court-of-fandoms-and-art, @casuallyonearth, @dumbdumbbubblegumdingdongbat, @reallyangryrn, @my-fan-side, 

[lesbian-sora]

Mirror, Mirror Part 1

Author: Me! :D

Artist: @rupls

Beta: @phansromance

Summary: Dan and Phil get invited to stay at a historical castle with Martyn and Cornelia. Contrariwise, Daniel and Philip aren’t invited anywhere, but not many people can say no to a highly trained thief and a dragon. But that’s totally unrelated 

Part Two

Word Count: (Total) 57K (This part) 31K

Warnings: Fantasy Violence (specifically there are some dead dogs later), and swearing

Author’s Note:

I have......... been working on this since August of 2015. So it makes sense that not only is it a day late (what are dates?) but it’s also not QUITE done. Lana has been great, but also really busy so xe hasn’t quite finished editing everything, and we’re going to keep working on it! So, if you see any mistakes, or something you would change, feel free to send either of us an ask! Thanks so much for reading!

Dan stretched long and lazily, blinking in the bright light streaming in from the window of his room. He laid in bed for a few minutes trying to suss out how long he had slept in and if Phil was awake or not. Upon realizing the angle of the sun and the distinct lack of coffee smell in the air, he decided he was definitely up way earlier than Phil. Yawning one last time, he threw his legs over the side of the bed and shuffled out into the hall. He took the opportunity to peek into Phil’s room to check on him. He smiled when he saw his boyfriend still snoring away, hair in complete disarray. He made his way to the kitchen where he went to poking about in the fridge to see what he could make them for breakfast. He decided on omelettes after finding some onion and peppers left over from a few days before.

As if summoned by the scent of cooking eggs Phil stumbled into the kitchen. Or well, he would have if he hadn’t run face first into the door jamb. He rubbed his head and grumbled under his breath and properly made his way into the kitchen. All the while Dan cackled at his misfortune.

“Morning, sunshine,” Dan cooed sarcastically. Phil glared and started mixing up his mandatory morning coffee.

“Your eggs are burning,” he said in lieu of a greeting. He smirked behind his coffee cup and watched Dan swear and whip around to try and save his omelette as best he could.

“You’re the worst,” Dan scowled, pouting at his extra-crispy eggs.

Phil cocked a brow and grabbed the unburned, cheese-free breakfast Dan had made for him. “I mean at least I warned you instead of letting you turn them to charcoal.”

“I deserve so much better, honestly.”

“Of course you do,” Phil agreed breezily, pulling Dan in for a quick good morning peck. “So, how’d you sleep?”

Dan shrugged noncommittally. “Alright, I guess. I actually went to bed before sunrise so I got a few hours. You?”

“I actually had a super weird dream. I hate I can’t remember any more of it than I can because I’m pretty sure I was flying at one point.”

“Yeah, I can’t remember much of mine, either. I think I robbed a bank or something, though.”

Phil snorted and grinned. He was clearly more awake now that he’d gotten caffeine and conversation. “You? Robbing a bank? You sure about that?”

“Oh, don’t laugh too much Mr Lester, you were driving the getaway car,” Dan snickered. “Honestly, I can’t decide what’s more ridiculous: Me somehow managing to steal money from someone or you managing to drive us anywhere but off a cliff.”

“You mean you wouldn’t want to Thelma and Louise it with me?” Phil pouted.

“Sorry, babe, but I’m not planning on dying with or without you any day soon.” Dan grinned, flicking one of the darker burn spots across the table at Phil.

“Well, then I suppose we’d best avoid robbing any banks today.”

“Shit, there goes my plan for the day.”

Phil huffed out a little half laugh and let a comfortable silence fall over them while they finished eating. “Hey, do you actually have any plans for today?” Phil asked, grabbing Dan’s plate and cup and putting all their dishes in the dishwasher. “Martyn and Cornelia are in town and wanted to meet for a late lunch if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dan shrugged and stood up. “I was just going to spend today editing that gaming video, but I’m going to need a break around then.”

“I hate to distract you from your super productive day, but do you maybe want to watch a couple episodes of Erased?”

“I suppose you could manage to convince me,” Dan grinned. “Might need to really twist my arm, though.”

Phil rolled his eyes fondly and shoved Dan toward the lounge. “Shove off, and get everything set up, it’s your turn.”

_________

Several hours and answered emails later, Phil’s phone chirped. On his screen was a reminder that he and Dan needed to start getting ready if they wanted to make it to lunch on time. He wrested himself from the couch’s comfortable grasp and meandered towards his room. popping his head in Dan’s room to check on him and remind him of their plans. He was expecting to see Dan hunched over the computer, headphones blocking out all but the loudest distractions. Instead, he found Dan leaning back as far as the desk chair would allow and aimlessly staring at the ceiling. He turned in slow circles and listened to the soft indie music drifting through the air. “How’s the editing going?” Phil asked to announce his presence, already knowing how well editing was going.

Dan jolted at the sudden interruption, but recovered and smiled at his boyfriend. “Ah, well, not great,” he admitted. “It’s just been one of those days, you know? I swear I can’t focus on anything for more than two minutes before I’m back to staring at the ceiling.”

Phil walked over and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “You need to talk about it?” he asked, clearly concerned.

Dan smiled and shook his head, grabbing Phil’s hands in his own. “Nah, I promise it’s nothing to worry about. It just feels like there’s something really big coming up that we’re not prepared for and there’s nothing we can do.”

Phil frowned and hummed in thought. “Any idea what it could be? I mean we don’t have any super big projects going on and we’ve pretty much finished unpacking everything. Is there something we need to do for YouTube that I’m forgetting?”

Dan shrugged. “I don’t think there’s actually anything it’s just one of those things that you can’t really explain away.”

Phil hummed. “Yeah, I know those. Well, we can get prepared for our lunch date, so take a break and get dressed.”

“See you in an hour and a half, then,” Dan joked.

Phil snorted and gently shoved Dan’s shoulder. “Better not take you that long or I will leave you here.” Dan squawked about how he’d better not do that if he wanted a boyfriend for long. Yet, his cries fell on deaf ears as Phil stepped into his room to get dressed.

As usual, Phil was ready to go long before Dan and decided to wait for him out in the lounge. Fortunately, Dan was actually joking when he said how long it would take him to get ready. He appeared not too long after in fresh, neat clothes and brushed but not straightened hair. “You ready to go?” he asked, digging around in their junk bowl for the keys to the flat.

“Yeah,” Phil answered, standing up and popping his back.

“Cool,” Dan muttered absently. He ushered Phil out the front door before following him out and clicking the lock. “Where are we even going, by the way?”

“Misato!” Phil said with emphasis in the last half of the word.

“That place is good, we ought to go there more often.”

“It is really good but the tube ride is so long is it worth it?”

“Yeah, good point, maybe we shouldn’t.”

Phil grunted in agreement and they fell into an easy silence as they walked to the station. Dan seemed lost in his own world of thought, but Phil was very carefully watching him. It wasn’t unusual for the two of them to spend more than average amount of time in their relationship in silence. Once you got that comfortable with another person you get quiet. But there was some unspoken thing going on with Dan and Phil could tell. Unfortunately, no matter how long he spent staring at his boyfriend, he couldn’t read his mind. He was no closer to finding the source of whatever it was that had Dan so off balance without asking. Something told him that would get absolutely nothing done.

“So, I never asked, what’s Martyn doing in town?” Dan asked as they swayed from side to side with the motion of the near-empty train car they were in.

“Not sure, he didn’t say,” Phil shrugged. “Maybe he’s wishing you an early birthday?”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Phil, I don’t know if you remember, but we’re spending three days up north with your whole family for my birthday next week, so I doubt it’s that.” He quirked the corner of his mouth up into a devious grin. “Maybe he has some salacious gift he doesn’t want to give us in front of your mum.”

Phil wrinkled his nose, looking vaguely green at the mere idea of it. “Sorry, but even if he is here to give you that we’re not keeping it. There’s no way I’m even risking thoughts of my brother while we’re fucking.”

Dan smirked and bumped their arms together. “I doubt that’s his goal. Besides, he’d be hard-pressed to get us anything new anyways.” Phil turned absolutely scarlet and Dan bubbled over with giggles. For a man who enjoyed sex as much as he did, Phil was awfully bashful when it came to discussing it.

“You’re the worst person,” Phil pouted, pulling out his phone to double check their directions.

“Should I tweet that then?” Dan teased, retrieving his own phone from his pocket. “Dan Howell, statistically speaking the worst person in the world according to Phil Lester.”

Phil huffed indignantly but otherwise ignored Dan until his phone lit up with a Twitter notification.

Daniel Howell Tweeted: lol so apparently im statistically the worst person. thanks for the update @AmazingPhil

Phil looked up at Dan, who was grinning widely at him, and quirked a brow and went back to typing on his phone. Dan puffed his cheeks at the disappointing lack of response and went back to scrolling. That is until his phone lit up with a notification of its own.

Phil Lester replied: And you’re the one who said to keep the online flirting to a minimum. smh

Dan sputtered and gawked at Phil who was pleasantly smiling at his phone like he’d done nothing wrong. To be fair, he actually hadn’t done anything wrong. But it was a well-known fact that nothing made Dan more embarrassed than being called out on his flirting. “I should tell everyone that we’re actually on our way to get super kinky sex toys from your brother,” Dan threatened.

“You totally should. Make sure you tag my parents and your grandmother while you’re at it.”

Dan narrowed his eyes, trying to ignore the tingling in his cheeks that came from the blood ever so slowly retreating back to where it belonged. “You win this round, Phil Lester.”

Phil grinned and pulled his pouting boyfriend in by the waist. Glancing around, he rose up slightly on his toes to press a kiss to his cheek. “Cheer up, love. The wind will change and your face will be stuck like that.”

“You know, the more you say that the less I believe your mum actually told you that.”

Phil snickered and shook his head, so Dan went back to ignoring him in favour of his feed. He was actually in the middle of a rather juicy Twitter chain when Phil nudged his arm to alert him of their impending stop. When the car shuddered to a stop they shuffled onto the much more crowded platform. Thanks to years of practice, they made their way to the street without losing sight of each other. “Alright, Mr Map, where is this place?” Dan asked, looking around. Maybe if he searched the sushi restaurant would materialize in the middle of the street.

“Around the corner here,” Phil said with all the confidence of a man staring down at a set of Google provided directions. “Assuming Martyn is early like he always is, we’ll get there just in time to order drinks.” Just as Phil predicted, they made it to the restaurant in time to see a waiter taking Martyn and Cornelia’s orders. After explaining to the hostess that their party was already seated, they managed to catch the waiter and request their drinks.

“Long time no see,” Martyn joked, reaching out to shake their hands while Cornelia gave them both quick hugs around the neck.

“It is always lovely to see you both,” Cornelia beamed. “We should do it more often; I feel like we only ever get together for work.”

“We see each other at vacations,” Dan corrected. “So it’s more like we only see each other for work or when we’re being babysat.” Cornelia snickered a bit, and Dan smiled at them both. “So, what prompted you to summon us?” As soon as the words left his mouth, Dan blushed while the rest of the table laughed. “That didn’t come out quite like I expected it to.”

“What Dan means is, what’s up, you two?” Phil clarified, bumping against his boyfriend fondly.

“Not much,” Martyn shrugged. “It seems like the whole YouTube community is taking a break after last year. We’ve mostly been working on some smaller projects for people.”

“It’s letting us meet loads of neat people,” Cornelia added. “There’s this one lady who runs the tourist department of Hever Castle. She was actually so impressed with the work we did she offered us a complimentary night this weekend.”

“Holy cow, that’s cool,” Phil marvelled. “I hope you two have fun.”

As he said that Martyn’s phone dinged loudly, announcing the arrival of an email. Martyn quickly scanned the email and looked up, pleasantly surprised. “Funny enough, that’s her now. Apparently, there was a last minute cancellation. She’s told us to invite some other people to come with us this weekend. What do you say, a free night in a luxury castle hotel with your big bro?”

“We’re in,” Dan beamed. Phil raised a brow at his eagerness but Dan just rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, you know you want to spend the night in a castle. Plus it’s a great chance to take a break and hang out with Martyn and Cornelia.”

“Well, it’s not like I was going to refuse, but maybe a bit more conversation next time?”

“Don’t worry, Phil,” Cornelia grinned. “Martyn and I already know the two of you communicate telepathically; your secret is safe with us.”

Dan barked out one of his signature goose laughs, garnering the attention of the nearby table, but he paid them no mind. “Well, I guess that means I’d better finish editing that video in the next couple days if we want to upload it Monday.”

“I can help if you get stuck,” Phil offered. “I’m pretty good at Daniel Howell editing if I do say so myself. They’d never even notice.”

“Well, I guess that’s our weekend plans sorted,” Martyn said. “Now, we’ve just got to decide on lunch.”

When their waiter returned they ordered their sushi. They spent an hour or so swapping stories. Phil told a rather dramatized version of an incident a lady walking her three dogs. But as he stayed quiet when Dan demonized their neighbours Dan figured they’d both let it slide. After, Cornelia regretfully reminded Martyn that they had a meeting to get to. Another round of handshakes and hugs later they were on the street to their next destination.

“Crazy how that worked out, isn’t it?” Dan asked, squinting up at the suddenly dark sky to see if they’d make it home before they got soaked.

“Yeah,” Phil mumbled in agreement. He didn't need clarification to know Dan was referring to their sudden weekend trip. He felt there was something off about the whole thing, but he shrugged it off, choosing to focus on the good. “Crazy.”

_______________

“Halt!”

Daniel laughed jovially and put on a burst of speed to outrun the guards hot on his trail, quickly losing them in the dark trees. The reasonably large satchel of coins and jewels attached to his belt bounced against his thigh with every step, jingling merrily. Skidding across loose gravel and dirt he darted through the woods until he came to a sudden stop at the sheer edge of a cliff. He grinned, looking over the edge that went straight down to a ravine that ended in a lake several hundred feet down, and waited. The guards soon came tumbling out of the woods to see the dark elf smirking victoriously with one foot over the edge of the cliff.

Philip, I hope you’re ready for this Daniel thought offhandedly. Then with a jaunty wave to the guards and a sarcastic “Better luck next time,” he took that last backwards step

Falling had always been a very odd feeling for Daniel. On one hand, there was the absolute terror that always accompanied plummeting towards your death so quickly your breath was left far above your head. On the other, there was the absolutely exhilarating feeling of knowing that he’d be fine at the end as long as he had Philip. As predicted after only a few seconds of falling Daniel found himself safely (albeit harshly) landing on the back of a great black dragon.

You shouldn’t have done that, Philip nagged telepathically while Daniel panted in efforts to regain his lost breath. There’s a line between doing what has to be done and recklessly endangering yourself and you and I both know you crossed that line.

“What does it matter?” Daniel whined, flopping back dramatically. “We got the jewels and everyone is fine so it’s not a problem. I didn’t even kill anyone. You’re just a worry wart.” Suddenly Philip’s back spines shot up a bit, harshly poking Daniel all down his back causing him to shoot up with a cry of pain and rub his back. “What was that for, you overgrown lizard?”

If I’m a worry wart then you’re a dramatic little nuisance. It’d probably be better for both of us if I found a travelling theatre troupe and left them to deal with you.

“Yeah, yeah,” Daniel pouted. “Just take us home. I’m hungry as fuck. I’ll probably waste away and die before I get any decent food.”

Philip chuckled, a strange sound to come from a dragon as it sounded more like a hissing earthquake than laughter. There was also the minor inconvenience that when he did it smoke unfurled from his nostrils which sent it straight into Daniel’s face when they were flying causing him to squawk and sputter. You are the biggest baby I have ever met.

Daniel muttered something about dumb winged snakes but settled back down for the ride. It wasn’t very far to the cave they had claimed as their lair (Well, Philip claimed it as his lair. Daniel showed up and made himself at home, a fact Philip never hesitated to remind him of.) but he always enjoyed any time spent riding Philip as it was something he actually didn’t get to do all that often. Most of their time was spent in and around their cave with Philip lounging about admiring his hoard, but whenever Philip got a thirst for gold or Daniel for adventure they had to travel and the quickest and easiest way was flight.

However, Daniel’s favourite times were when Philip decided he needed to stretch his wings and they would aimlessly fly around for hours. Usually Philip snap that he’d had enough of Daniel and that was the main reason he was leaving in the first place (Daniel honestly couldn’t blame him. Dragons were, by nature, jealous and solitary creatures so the very fact that Philip hadn’t already eaten him already was a miracle in and of itself,) but every now and then he’d smile at Daniel, all sharp-toothed and welcoming, and invite him along. They’d fly and fly with no destination in mind, Daniel clinging to Philip for his life as they soared and dove and flipped and spiralled through and above clouds, both of them loving every moment of it.

After an hour or two Philip would land in some forgotten meadow or on an abandoned beach to let Daniel back on solid ground for a rest and to get his heart rate back down. As always, before long the boy was begging to get back in the sky, much to the dragon’s amusement. There was just something about the way he could feel every last muscle of Philip’s wings beat beneath him combined with the weightlessness he felt and the rush of excitement every time Philip did anything outside of the normal that made Daniel’s chest tight with joy.

As if reading his mind, (which, knowing the sneaky lizard was probably accurate) Philip beat his wings extra hard, sending them shooting up before taking a nosedive towards the lake below, pulling up at the last minute to the sound of Daniel’s cries of joy. Daniel leaned over Philip’s shoulder as much as he knew he could just to see his own grinning face reflected in the perfectly smooth water they were almost skimming over. He was tempted to reach down and trail his fingers over the surface of the water but he knew from experience he’d just lose his balance and fall in and hitting water while flying at high speeds is never fun. Also, he knew (again, from experience) that Philip would just fly off and be absolutely no help and he’d have to swim to shore and walk home, which was never any fun.

Sensing Daniel’s ever-weakening restraint, Philip snorted with an eye-roll and beat his wings hard a few times to get them back up, past the tops of the trees and amongst the clouds. Traveling at night had more than its fair share of advantages in addition to Daniel’s sensitivity to sunlight, and Philip’s personal favourite was the fact that his dark body blended in seamlessly with the night sky, meaning they could fly undetected without worrying about tree cover slowing them down.

They flew for almost an hour when the forest started to thin out before finally letting out into the sea. Philip rumbled his delight along with Daniel as he swooped down so they could find the mouth of their home along the craggy shore. When Philip found the cave - about a hundred years ago, long before he and Daniel crossed paths - it had been much smaller than it was now, but after so many years of carving it was more than suitable for a dragon his size and age. In fact, if he kept up work on it, it would be an impressively large lair for when he was an ancient dragon and merely had to worry about guarding the hoard he’d amassed instead of trying to grow it. As it was, it had a main area that was mostly devoid of any indication of his presence to dissuade intruders and two antechambers, one for his hoard and sleeping and the other for everything else. Before it had stayed mostly empty as Philip wasn’t fond of kidnapping royals or challenging knights, but Daniel had taken over and filled it with creature comforts. Philip found most of them useless and a waste of space but even he could admit that sometimes that bed Daniel had stolen was more comfortable than a pile of gold.  

As soon as they landed and Daniel was off of his back, Philip polymorphed into his humanoid shape. He was rather proud of his polymorph shape as it was mostly human, but with very distinguishing dragon features including his wings and tail, and had taken him years to perfect. There was no bigger shame amongst dragons than someone who couldn’t control their powers enough to change shape, but it was a well-known belief that if you could do it completely perfect then maybe you weren’t a real dragon and deserved to stay human. “So, what did you manage to get?” he asked eagerly, eyeing the rather small bag in Daniel’s hand.

“Eh, mostly the usual,” Daniel shrugged, digging around blindly. “Mostly a few handfuls of gold pieces, and a few jewels we can sell in town for a very shiny copper piece.” He suddenly grinned and pulled out what he was looking for and held it up for inspection. “However, I think you’ll be much more interested in this.”

Without blinking, Philip snatched up the offered necklace with a clawed hand and brought it up close. It was made of gold with a small, thin but strong chain with a bright red jewel no bigger than the tip of Daniel’s littlest finger. It was pretty, but common and was worth more than most people had seen in their lives, but was far from the most valuable thing in the castle. No, it wasn’t the monetary worth of the necklace that had Philip so entranced, it was the craftsmanship. Every link of the fine chain had been forged and smithed into the exact perfect shape so that it fit in with its neighbour and the tiny jewel had been ever so carefully cut so that the light glinted at every angle. Something like this would have taken a master jeweller at least a few days to create, but based on the tiniest imperfections it had to have been done by an amateur, and that was the sweetest bit of all. It had taken someone at least two weeks of dedicated labour to craft this and Philip had stolen it, essentially stealing that time away as well. It was absolutely wonderful.  

“Is there anything else in there you want for your hoard?” Daniel asked breezily, admiring himself in his big mirror after decking himself out in gold and jewels from head to toe.

“That crown you’re wearing looks very nice.”

“Oh, boo, you great bully of a lizard,” Daniel scowled, taking off the crown and tossing it to Philip who caught it easily. “I never get anything I want.”

“You know where I’m putting it,” Philip said dismissively as he dug through the other things in the bag. There was nothing as impressive as the necklace or gaudy as the crown, but there was a fairly shiny cup he was rather fond of. “If you like it so much you can just get it from there.”

“You get all moody and growly whenever I touch your hoard,” Daniel complained.

“That was one time about three months after you showed up. You’re lucky I didn’t just eat you.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “You know, you say that all the time, but I actually have a hard time believing it. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have the guts.” Philip snarled and Daniel felt the room grow much warmer as he was suddenly and vividly reminded just who his best friend was. Yes, he and Philip had grown very close over the year they’d been together, but he was still a dragon and a mean one at that. He might not want to hurt Daniel at this moment, but with little to no warning he could change his mind and Daniel could find himself back at the mercy of the world at best or a soot stain at worst. He quickly changed the subject. “We should go out tomorrow.”

Philip cocked his head curiously. “Why should we? We literally just robbed them; I doubt they’re going to have much unless you’re saying you did a bad job.”

“Of course, I did a great job. What kind of elf do you take me for?” Daniel scoffed. “I meant going into Bricstow to buy and sell things. Are you aware of the fact that we’re out of food?”

“Considering I don’t eat the food you do, I was completely unaware,” Phil said. “I don’t know why you don’t just go foraging or something while I hunt.”

Daniel huffed. “Because I had to forage and steal food for the first forty years of my life and while I have the money to eat like a king I’m going to do just that.”

Philip yawned, he could almost feel the first rays of sunlight peeking over the hills. “Alright, fine, we’ll go to Bricstow, but not until the day after tomorrow. We’ll have to be out during the day and you get whiney if you don’t have enough rest.” Ignoring Daniel’s offended protests, he transformed back into his full dragon self and took his new treasures to his room. His hoard wasn’t astonishingly large by any means, but it was big enough and only held the very best so it made Philip happy and that was all that mattered.

With a deep rumble Daniel would call a yawn, he curled up in and around his hoard, waiting for sleep to wash over him. However, before it could, he felt a small, warm body worm its way under his wing to rest in the (relatively) soft fold where his front leg met his torso.

And what do you think you’re doing in here?

Oh, like you don’t know. You know I meditate better when I know you’re there.

Philip snorted and rolled his eyes, but he ever so slightly brought his wing in a little closer to his body in a protective manner to shield the prone body beneath it. Much as he loathed to admit it even to himself, much less to anyone else, Daniel truly was his favourite addition to his hoard and he planned to keep it that way.

_______________

“Move your lazy arse,” Daniel growled, fruitlessly shoving his whole weight against a fully grown dragon like he legitimately thought that would make the slightest bit of difference.

Philip snorted. Yes, I’m the lazy one. Let’s ignore the fact that I’m flying two hours to take a skinny little elf on a shopping trip I have absolutely no interest in because he doesn’t want to just make the journey on foot.

“Name one half sane person who would make a six-hour walk when he can fly instead,” Daniel argued. “Now, come on. We’re burning daylight and I hate being up and about at this hour.”

Philip let out a rumble from deep within his chest to show his unhappiness but heaved himself to his feet, much to Daniel’s delight. He took his time stretching his neck, his wings, and all four of his legs while Daniel stood to the side tapping his foot impatiently. When he was done he blinked at Daniel to let him know it was time to go.

Grumbling the whole way, the dark elf clambered his way up and when he was settled he flipped up the hood of his cloak to protect from the sun. “Let’s get the hell out of here, shall we?”

With that, Philip weaved his body back and forth like a snake for a moment as if getting used to the way it moved before suddenly darting forward through the mouth of the cave and diving down the sheer cliff face towards the sea below. Right before they crashed into the water, he unfurled his great wings and let the ocean wind lift him up to his cruising altitude before he began to slowly flap.

It was a beautiful, perfectly clear day, and under normal circumstances, Daniel would have been absolutely tickled pink and looking around to see everything possible, but as it was daylight he couldn’t do that. Instead, he was huddled up under his thickest cloak, trying his best to both stay cool and keep as much sun as possible off his sensitive skin. He was fine - albeit uncomfortable - when he was out in the sun so long as he had at least partial shade, but when they were flying there was nothing to protect him, so all he could do was suffer through. Philip would never admit it, but it greatly concerned him to see his friend in such distress and he almost subconsciously started flying ever so slightly faster.

Bricstow was the perfect city for Daniel and Philip to sell the treasures they decided not to keep. It wasn’t by any means the largest city around, but it was big enough that it garnered a rather large market full of merchants who had learned not to ask too many questions, and it was only about twenty miles away from their cave and through some very dense forest which made traveling there and back in a day easy for them, but rather more difficult for anyone who decided to follow them. There was also a very convenient meadow not too far out of town where they could land out of view of prying eyes, which, after nearly two hours of unfortunately silent flight, Philip was hovering over as he looked for the ideal place to touch down.

“Thank fuck,” Daniel sighed as soon as he was on the ground and in the shade of some trees. “I hate flying during the day.”

“You and me both,” said Philip, who had transformed into his humanoid shape. “Now come on, let’s go get your stuff.”

Together they made their way into town, Philip garnering several terrified glances that he absolutely revelled in. Daniel rolled his eyes and tugged him along to his favourite stall, run by a Kenku by the name of Bofraran. Like most of his birdman people, he was far too interested in gold to ask questions and usually forgot to wonder how an allegedly homeless drow came across the items Daniel had for sale. He underpaid for most of the things he acquired, but all of his deals came with an unspoken vow of silence that he wasn’t about to break anytime soon.

“Ah, Daniel!” he crooned as soon as they stepped in. “It’s been quite a while since I last saw you, how have you been? Did you come to visit your old friend?”

“Cut the bullshit, Bofaran,” Daniel said narrowing his eyes. “You and I both know why we’re here so stop wasting time.”

Bofaran merely shrugged his feathered shoulders. “Nobody ever wants to just talk these days. It’s always rush rush rush with you folk. No manners. Now, let’s see what we have here.” He peered into the bag and pulled out a few items to inspect closer. There was one ring that he seemed particularly keen on as he started chattering delightedly after looking at it for a moment. “Why, Daniel, you always do bring me the prettiest things.”

“We keep the prettiest,” Philip corrected him flatly, perusing the wares set out with disinterest.

Bofaran clicked his beak together in agitation for a moment at Philip’s tone but soon turned back to Daniel, returning to his oily business tone. “I’ll give you one thousand gold pieces for the bag.”

Daniel actually laughed out loud for a moment. “Try again, Bof. That ring in your hand is worth more than a thousand. Aim a bit higher this time.”

Bofaran narrowed his beady black eyes. “One and a half.”

“Three.”

“One and three quarters.”

“Two and a half.”

“Two.”

Daniel pursed his lips and snatched the ring from Bofraran’s talons. “Maybe you didn’t hear me; I’ll repeat myself. Two. And a. Half. Take the deal or we walk birdman.”

Bofaran clicked his beak together a bit more, staring longingly at the ring Daniel was rolling through his fingers. After a moment, he sighed and pulled out his chest and started counting out tiny bags of gold. “Deal. Two thousand five hundred gold. It’s more than I’d pay for just about anything but that ring will more than bring it back and I’m fairly certain between you and your dragon friend I don’t stand a chance.”

Daniel grinned wolfishly and swept the money into his bag with one arm. “Pleasure doing business with you, Bofaran. It’s always good to see old friends.”

Bofran ruffled up his feathers beneath his baggy robes. “You would say that after you’ve robbed me blind. Now, go. Get out before I get it in my mind to call the guards.”

Daniel laughed right in the unhappy kenku’s face. “Right, yeah. You’ll call the guards. Will that be before or after you stash away the illegal scrolls and magic weapons?”

“Out!”

Still cackling, Daniel grabbed Philip’s arm and dragged them outside. “Come on, it’s food time. I think I saw someone up here selling foods from the Underdark.”

As expected, a few stalls down there was an old, pretty High Elf woman named Sisar selling all manner of Drow delicacies along with her usual wares. As usual, Philip found most of what Daniel loaded into his bag distasteful, but he did wind up picking out some forest strider drumsticks and some delightfully pungent goat sausage for their meal in town. With their newly bought food, they managed to find a secluded area where they could eat without being disturbed or leaving town.

“You’re not going to like that,” Philip said breezily, sinking his fangs into his drumstick after giving it a quick charbroil with his flames.

“What are you talking about?” Daniel scowled, looking up from his comically black meal. “I’ll have you know these foods are a cultural delight for my people.”

“You say that every time you manage to find someone selling this stuff,” Philip argued. “And yet, every time you wind up hating at least half of it. I noticed you only got more than one meal’s worth of stuff for about half of what’s on your plate.”

As if trying to prove Philip wrong, Daniel grabbed the egg he had bought (some kind of faerzress infused duck egg, if Phil was remembering correctly) and took about half of it into his mouth in one big bite. He immediately regretted this decision. Philip raised his eyebrow as Daniel’s face seemed to almost turn inside out at the sudden, unbearably salty flavour that flooded his mouth. “Maybe that particular thing isn’t for me,” he squeaked out after fighting to choke it down.

“Well, I’m fairly certain those are supposed to be a soup starter,” Philip laughed. “Come on, now, you know what you do and do not like, just skip to the good stuff.”

“I’ll eat whatever I want!” Daniel snapped. He looked down at the Donigarten Moss Snails he had next up for eating and did his best to swallow down the bile at the back of his throat. “You know what? Maybe I will skip out on this today.”

“Why don’t you tell me about the stuff you do actually like?” Philip suggested, not unkindly.

Daniel beamed. “I have black velvet ear fungus, which are these dark brown things that kind of look like wood shavings; black truffle rothe cheese from Menzoberranzan, which is super savory and creamy and delicious; and I have some blind cave fish caviar, which mostly just taste like salt, but they’re good with the mushrooms.”

Philip nodded and did his best to not look sick to his stomach. “You people are certainly… fond of your heritage as far as food goes.”

“Humans are the worst about it,” Daniel shrugged. “I mean, they have food specific to their race and where they came from and even their specific families. I mean, yeah, there are slight differences from place to place with everyone, but from what I remember pretty much everyone in the Underdark ate basically the same thing.”

Philip hummed, but he was quickly losing interest as he had spotted a very wealthy looking orc lady who was carrying an absolutely stunning tapestry bag over her arm. “Wait here,” he said to Daniel, effortlessly getting to his feet with a short flap of his wings. He smoothly cut his way through the crowd until he was walking right next to his target. “That’s a lovely bag there you have, Miss,” he said, charm dripping off every word. “Might I ask you a bit about it?”

The orc looked positively terrified at the sight of a rather large mouthful of very sharp teeth grinning at her. “I-I bought it not long ago.”

“Any idea who made it?”

“M-Malement,” she stammered. “He’s the-the Dragonborn weaver in Lundy.”

“Oh, it’s a shame we’re in Bricstow, I would love to have a bag like that,” he lamented. Then he smiled again, wider and sharper and more dangerous than before. “Say, you wouldn’t mind giving me yours would you?”

“But I-I had to wait two months for him to finish this one for me!”

“Even better,” he cooed, completely delighted. “Now, why don’t you give that to me and I won’t have to do something we’ll both regret.” The colour quickly drained from her face, and without another word, she shoved her bag into Philip’s waiting hands. “Don’t even think about telling the guards about this, yeah?” She nodded quickly, and as quickly as she could she darted down the street. Philip chuckled to himself as he made his way back to Daniel, closely inspecting his find. It wasn’t quite two months worth of work, but it was perfectly and expertly made and it was rather pretty.

“Find something fun, did you?” Daniel asked, cocking an eyebrow and immediately taking the bag so he could look through it. Much to Philip’s displeasure. “Why was this woman carrying around so much garbage?” he whined, dumping it out. “She has like four gold, but she’s got a jar of… griffon grease?”

“Maybe she’s a wizard and these are her spell components,” Philip rationalized, looking at a vial of fingernail clippings in mild disgust.

“The fuck kind of spell needs this horse shit?” Daniel demanded, shaking a bubble pipe at him.

Delighted, Philip dropped the nail vial, grabbed the pipe and started blowing smoke-filled bubbles. “Whatever she had it for doesn’t much matter anymore as it’s ours now. Just take what of it seems remotely valuable and leave the rest.”

Daniel frowned, looking over the pile of stuff, before grabbing a teardrop shaped necklace that appeared to be made of an actual teardrop and left the rest. “Well, again, most of this is worthless and I don’t much fancy being weighed down, do you?”

Philip shrugged and tossed the necklace and pipe back in the bag. “I only really wanted the bag in the first place.”

“Come on, then, I have a few more things I want to get before we head back home.”

Philip grumbled under his breath, but acquiesced, following Daniel around as he purchased all sorts of boring things like chests with locks, silk rope, clothes, ink and parchment, more armour and weapons, lanterns, healing potions and candles. He was honestly convinced the drow was just spending money to spend it at this point, and to make Philip carry heavy things.

“Alright, I think that’s everything,” Daniel announced, checking over his list one more time. “Time to head on out, I guess then.” When Philip didn’t make yet another sarcastic comment, Daniel looked up to see him staring with complete focus at a tent with a modest sign that said “Estelaria: Fortunes Told.” “Oh, you can’t be serious.”

Philip turned and scowled at him. “We came all this way for your trivial things; we’re going in this tent.”

Daniel huffed, and rolled his eyes, but followed Philip inside, leaving their possessions just inside. It was dark and humid within the canvas, and the air was filled with smoke, but the fortuneteller was suspiciously absent. “Well, looks like nobody’s home. If we leave now I promise not to make fun of you the whole way back.”

“There’s someone here,” Philip hissed, looking around eyes narrowed and tail lashing. “I can sense it.”

“Look, can we just-”

“You don’t seem to have much faith in my abilities, Drow.”

Daniel whipped around to see a pretty aasimar woman sat at the previously empty table, her chin resting on her folded hands. Her skin was a warm copper tone and she had a pair of purple stars painted onto her cheeks; however, her most defining features were her bright purple eyes and dark purple hair that looked to have the very stars from the sky woven into it. “My name is Estelaria,” she smiled, offering a gloved hand in greeting. “You’re Daniel and Philip, I presume.”

“How did you know that?” Daniel demanded, eyeing her suspiciously.

Philip rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m no genius, but I’m pretty sure between her being able to predict the future and us being wanted criminals it wasn’t too hard to guess.” He turned to Estelaria with a smile and pressed a kiss to her hand. “Never you mind him. You know children these days have no manners.”

She laughed and withdrew her hand while Daniel scowled. “Don’t concern yourself with me; I’ve had more than one doubter come through here.” She grinned and leaned forward to stage whisper conspiratorially, “I haven’t had a doubter leave, though.”

Philip chuckled but Daniel just frowned deeper. “Is that supposed to be endorsing your own abilities or a poorly veiled threat on my life?” He was completely and totally ignored.

“So, what do you charge for a fortune reading?” Philip asked, hands already going towards their coin purse, which Daniel regretted making him carry now.

“Oh, for you two?” Estelaria asked with a knowing smile. “Absolutely nothing.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed further. What kind of person didn’t charge for their services? Even if those services were completely phoney, you should still get some coin from it.

Philip, on the other hand, didn’t seem remotely phased by the refusal. “So, how do you predict the future? Crystal ball, tarot cards, palm reading?”

She beamed at him like she’d been waiting to hear that specific question. “Actually, no. I do things a bit differently.” She then revealed her wand, it was red and ended with her signature purple star, and waved it. Suddenly the room grew pitch black before little spots of light all around burst into existence. “I read the stars.”

Philip seemed delighted with the display as he always was when people performed magic, but Daniel’s skin immediately began to crawl. The darkness that filled the tent was definitely of magic - very powerful magic at that - and even with his Darkvision, he couldn’t see anything not illuminated by the summoned stars. Judging from the power evident in the spells necessary for this he was sure Estelaria could beat him handily, even with Philip’s help, and he didn’t like spending extended periods of time with people he couldn’t handle in a fight.

Estelaria hummed to herself for a moment as she peered at the twinkling lights around her. “You two have been busy, I see,” she said, cocking a brow at them. Philip laughed, producing a small flame that filled his mouth, just to be a showoff. “You aren’t really after monetary things, dragon, which I must say I find a bit odd.”

Philip shrugged. “Every dragon has his own taste.”

“Yes, and it seems yours is more handcrafted, preferably magic,” she noted. She turned to Daniel and smiled. “You, however, are much more direct. Orphaned at a young age and facing prejudice from surface dwellers, you had to fight for every meagre thing you had, and now that you have the means your only drive is gaining as much money as possible and spending it on your slightest whims.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Daniel huffed. “That’s the exact same sob story of pretty much every drow up here. I was just lucky enough to be kidnapped by a picky dragon instead of left to starve on the streets.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Regardless of how many shares your story it is yours. But this is all in the past and matters not, for I am a fortuneteller, not a history book.” Daniel snorted, but she ignored him and instead went back to studying her stars. She was mostly silent for a moment as she wandered around her tent, measuring the stars with her hands and muttering, “No… no, that doesn’t make any sense.”

This went on for a solid few minutes before Philip’s infamous dragon temper wore thin. “What exactly doesn’t make sense?” he snapped.

Estelaria blinked at him for a moment. “There’s only one path written in the stars for the both of you,” she explained. “Not only should there be a separate set of paths for each of you, those sets should have more than one option. I was trained to be read the possible paths and tell you the most likely one and how you could stray from it. This… this is unprecedented, impossible even.”

“Why don’t you just tell us what you have found instead of wasting our time marvelling over the things you can’t?” Daniel suggested snidely.

She sighed and collapsed in her chair, rubbing her temples. With a wave of her wand, the lights disappeared and the darkness faded. “You’re about to face your greatest challenge yet,” she said after another moment. “You will face and triumph over one challenge and you may trick yourself into thinking you’ve won, but you have only just begun. You will face battles you can’t fight in a place you’ve never even dreamed of. You will discover things about yourselves during this challenge that you never knew you never knew. Your pasts are incredibly important and you will learn just how much they have shaped you over the years.”

Daniel and Philip met the other’s gaze for a half second before Philip loudly said, “Well, that was incredibly vague and useless, and I mean even more incredibly vague and useless than I was prepared for, and I was prepared for a lot.” He bent down and scooped up their belongings. “Now, if you don’t mind, we’ll be taking our leave.”

“Wait!” she shouted after them. “I have one warning for you! One way you can diverge from this path! Whatever you do, don’t take the next heist you hear about.”

“We’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Daniel simpered, already halfway out the door.

When they were back on the road, Philip turned to Daniel, so angry that smoke was furling out of the corners of his mouth. “How dare she waste my time like that?” he snarled. “Future sight is a noble art and for her to claim the title with none of the skill is a slander to the profession.”

“You’re surprisingly butthurt over this,” Daniel chuckled. “I mean, I knew you were the superstitious type, but this seems a little much.”

Philip looked like he was about to snap back a retort when suddenly his face changed to one of curiosity and he cocked his head to get a better sound. When he did begin to speak it was in the shrill, rough voice of a young aarakockra girl. “- I heard there was more gold there than you’d ever dream of having. A magic mirror and everything! The place is empty, too; all for the taking!”

He spoke again, but now with the slow speech of a Goliath. “Yes, but how many people must die before the place is marked for what it is - a cursed trap for any and all adventurers.”

This time a male goblin used his voice to say, “Oh, do you really believe all that nonsense? The only thing cursed about that place is your own perception of it.”

“You can’t disagree with facts,” the goliath argued. “And the fact is that too many people have died going after this. I won’t be another.”

“Well, you are replaceable,” the aarakockara pointed out.

“You’d leave me behind, Resa?” the goliath asked sounding hurt.

“Yes, we can and we will,” the goblin snapped. “Now, are you coming with us to Eadhelmsbrigge or not?”

“I still think it’s a bad idea but-” Philip stopped channelling their conversation as soon as he realized there was no more information to be had. “I know what castle they’re talking about,” he said smugly.

“You’re joking,” Daniel grinned. “Why haven’t you said something before now then?”

“I didn’t know exactly where it was,” Philip explained. “I knew there was an old castle in the east of Umbria that was full of treasure and allegedly cursed, but I didn’t know which one exactly it was. If they’re going to Eadhelmsbrigge, though, there’s only one castle there and that’s Waldorf castle.”

“How far away is it?”

“About a day and a half’s flight.”

“Think we can beat them there?”

Philip smirked. “You know we can.”

_______________

“You know, considering we’re supposed to be going off on an adventure, you sure are making this incredibly boring,” Daniel groaned, flopping dramatically over his favourite lounge chair.

Philip growled at him. “Well, if I didn’t have a needy little flesh bag tagging along I would have left by now; instead I’m stuck here making sure he has everything he needs while he lazes about and bitches at me.”

Daniel snorted and rolled off the couch, not taking a word the irritated dragon said to heart. “Look, it’s just going to be five nights we’re gone. Two to travel there, one to steal everything we can carry, and two to get back. Easy. I don’t need you to pack everything I’ve ever owned. Look, I’ve got a pre-packed bag of basically everything I could possibly need.”

“And just what do you have in there?” Philip huffed, narrowing his eyes.

Daniel scoffed but started digging through his bag at Philip’s behest. “Uh, let’s see, I’ve got a shitload of ball bearings-”

“Why the hell would you need that?”

Daniel shrugged. “I dunno, setting off traps? Tripping people who might be following you? I’ve used them loads. Do you want to know what else is in here or not?”

Philip pursed his lips. “I’m almost scared to find out, but, yes, I do.”

Daniel grinned and began to list off the things he dug out which included his lock-picking tools, a tightly wound ball of string, a bell, candles, hammer and pitons, and a thick coil of hempen rope. “All I really need is water, food and a couple medicine packs,” he said, listing them off on his fingers.

“What about all your bedding and clothes?” Philip argued.

Daniel wrinkled his nose. “Okay, a change of clothes would probably be ideal, but I definitely don’t need blankets or anything. It’s the middle of summer and I sleep on you all the time anyway. Anything else is just taking up room.”

Philip frowned as Daniel went about gathering up all the rations he’d need for the trip. “If you’re sure. I just feel like there’s something going on that we don’t know about.”

Daniel snorted. “I swear to Lolth if you’re going to bring up that worthless fortune teller from yesterday I will leave and never come back.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on mentioning her, but with that kind of offer how can I refuse?”

“Fuck right off.”

“I am completely serious, though,” Philip insisted. “Something big is about to happen and I’m not sure we’ll know what to do when it does.”

Daniel sighed and stood up to look Philip in the eye. “Look, everything is going to be fine. You’re just on edge because you’re superstitious as hell and believe every story of castles being cursed ever. You know what’s going to happen? We’re going to get there and because we’re damn good at what we do - far better than most - we’re going to take care of all the traps, fight any monsters we have to and get rich. It’s going to be great and you’re going to have a cool ass mirror for your hoard.”

Philip rolled his eyes, but morphed back into his dragon form and let Daniel load their things onto his back. When he was done they set off, fortunately under the cool cover of night this time. As it was night there were few people awake and outside to see them and even fewer who could actually make out Philip’s dark form blotting out the stars as they soared overhead. Much to Daniel’s dismay, Philip kept the course straight and true, not dilly-dallying to do his usual flips and tricks. They weren’t in a race against time by any stretch of the imagination, but they did have a schedule to keep and he didn’t see much point in wasting time or energy on unnecessary aerial acrobatics.

This left Daniel rather bored during the two hour flights between breaks and after counting his bag of ball bearings for the fifth time (he had 916 every time he counted) he decided to inflict his misery on Philip. So, tell me more about this allegedly haunted castle we’re about to rob he thought casually. He laid back and made a game of trying to keep his eyes on a single star as the soared past them. The sun was just beginning to make its presence known and the sky was now a couple shades lighter than the inky blue it’d been all night. Fortunately, this meant they were going to be landing probably within the hour; unfortunately, this meant that the stars were even harder to stare at which drastically increased the level of Daniel’s game.

Well, I already told you that it’s Waldorf Castle, Philip explained. A couple hundred years back it was owned by the Waldorf family and the daughter married the king, leaving the parents alone in the castle as they had no other children. The story goes that they were really shitty to their servants, so one day the servants all gathered together, stuffed their pockets with as much gold they could carry, and just left. The lord and lady had absolutely no power to punish the servants into coming back, and they were too proud to change their behaviour, so eventually, they wound up dying right there in the castle because they didn’t know how to feed themselves.

Serves them right Daniel snorted. Probably had a loaded pantry and everything, the problem was just between their ears. Imagine starving to death in a castle because you’re too foolish to eat while there are actual people just outside your door starving because you won’t give them food.

It’s just the story Philip shrugged. There’s probably another answer, but I haven’t found one nearly entertaining enough to replace that one.

Daniel snickered for a moment before asking So, what’s the treasure inside like? Surely it’s a spectacle to behold.

Mostly just the normal things you’d find in a castle: Clothes, jewels, gold, and the like. The most interesting thing is the magic mirror the lady allegedly has. Nobody’s quite sure what it does, now or then. It’s got no functionality other than a normal mirror, but it’s got such a magical aura that even non-magic users like you would be able to feel it.

What good does that do anybody?

None, but there have been years of research put into discovering its use, and if I get it that time belongs to me.

So, tell me more about this curse then.

Philip rolled his eyes and snorted, sending a trail of smoke whizzing above Daniel who was glad he wasn’t sat back up. There’s no curse. Yes, a dozen or so parties have tried to get in and failed but that’s no reason to assume it’s cursed. Worst case scenario is that another dragon has taken it as their lair-

We could have has a castle for a lair?!

I could have taken a castle, but I didn’t because caves are more like where I grew up, and they’re easier to hide and protect. Anyway, it could be a dragon, but I haven’t heard anything and if they’re this close to my territory they should have come to see me by now. If it is a dragon it’s a young one, probably just out of the wyrmling stage and after its first lair.

Alright then, no dragons who would actually pose a threat. Got it. Will there at least be traps for me to set off?

Most likely.

Cool. I hope we come across a ghost. I’d love to fight a ghost.

Not really, you wouldn’t.

And why not?

You only have physical weapons. How well do you think punching a ghost is going to go?

You ruin all my fun.

Philip rumbled out a deep laugh from within his belly but said nothing. Instead, after spying a nice clear meadow surrounded by trees for them to camp under, he started to gently dive towards the ground. Once he was on the ground and unloaded, he transformed back to his humanoid shape grinned smugly. “I bet you’re glad I insisted we take those bedrolls now.”

“Well, you were supposed to be a great bloody lizard for me to rest on!”

“That form would have been way more conspicuous,” Philip argued. “Now, help me set up camp.”

Together they managed to set up a crude, easily dismantled shelter for the day and ate their meal. Finally, Philip collapsed across the pile of bedrolls they had set out (he didn’t quite grasp how they worked, but he was happy with his mini bedding hoard) and fell asleep immediately. Daniel joined him after making sure everything was picked up, and just as the first rays of sun peeked over the horizon his eyes slipped closed.

After a few hours of meditation, Daniel looked around and realized that there was absolutely nothing to do, so he closed his eyes again and attempted to sleep. As elves lacked the biological need to sleep, their sleep was different - generally lighter and more fitful - from other creatures, and this was particularly true for Drow who tried to sleep anywhere but the calming darkness of a cave. Thankfully, this quirk was actually far more helpful than detrimental for Daniel this time around.

“Philip, wake up,” he hissed, elbowing his sleeping friend in the side. Philip quickly startled awake with a slurred, “Wassamatter?” to which Daniel replied, “I think somebody found us.”

Philip yawned widely but silenced himself to better hear his surroundings. Everything was quiet for a moment and he was about to tell Daniel to go back to sleep when the sharp crack of a stick breaking jolted him into full alert mode. With a snarl, he rose to his feet, and before he was even stable he fell forwards onto all four dragon legs, his tail lashing back and forth angrily.

“Who’s there?” Daniel called out to the seemingly empty woods, grasping the handle of his short sword. “We know you’re there, and maybe if you come out we won’t hurt you.” Philip snorted at this so Daniel corrected himself. “Okay, we won’t kill you.”

“Oh, we’re not too concerned about you killing us.” Daniel whipped his head around to see a clever looking goblin emerging from the trees and running his fingers over the blade of a scimitar. Behind him, a Goliath and a young aarakocra followed carrying a greatclub and a light hammer. Daniel quickly thought back to the previous day and realized with a groan that these were the people they had overheard. The goblin smirked at the sudden realization on Daniel’s face. “Oh, you do remember us. Yes, we knew you were listening, because I just so happen to have a little device that tells me when unscrupulous people are prying.”

“Look, we don’t mean you any harm-”

“You mean to take our treasure!” the aarakocra interrupted, her voice just as high and sharp from her own beak as it had been from Philip’s. “That’s just as bad!”

“Hush, Resa,” the goliath soothed. “Deyoram and I will handle this.”

The goblin nodded. “Yes, we’ll handle this. Now, if the two of you don’t mind, I’d quite like to see the tail of this one-” he gestured to Philip, “-soaring through the air as the two of you make your way home.”

Philip growled, the sound rumbling in his chest and Daniel smirked. “Well, then it looks like we’ll just have to settle this the old-fashioned way.”

Before anyone else could even think of reacting, the aarakocra raised a taloned hand in the air and three glowing darts flew straight from her palm and into Philip’s side. The dragon scoffed at the weak attempt at harming him and breathed a cone of fire at the three challengers. The aarakocra flapped her wings quickly and only caught the very edge of the attack, but the goliath and goblin didn’t react quickly enough and were surrounded in flames. As soon as the flames subsided, the goblin let out a ferocious cry and rushed Daniel with his scimitar. However, Daniel nimbly stepped out of the way and brought his own sword down in a vicious slash. The goblin cried out in pain and Daniel was about to make another attack, but was buffeted away with a swing of the goliath’s club.

From her position in the air, the aarakocra levelled her crossbow at Philip and let off a shot, which bounced off his thick hide. He returned attack with his claws, attempting to slash her out of the air. After a few missed swipes, Philip caught her with one of his claws and sent her hurtling straight into the ground. After taking a moment to make sure she was still breathing, the goblin growled and slashed his sword at Daniel again. This time the attack caught him right across his belly, sending him stumbling back with a cry of pain. Gritting his teeth, he attacked, smirking when he felt his sword pierce right through a chink in the goblin’s armour. His victory was short lasted, however, because at that very moment the goliath attacked again with a harsh blow across the back of his head.

The aarakocra groaned and with what remained of her energy she cast another spell that created a cloud of daggers that floated and spun about like a swarm of bees. Daniel would have honestly been very impressed if he weren’t too busy being slashed by a hundred knives all at once. Philip had apparently grown tired of the fight because he reared back and shot another cone of fire at their attackers.

When the smoke and fire cleared all three of them were very still and covered in a good amount of soot and none of them were moving, not even when Daniel nudged them with his foot. Smirking he sauntered over to the goblin and rooted around in his pockets until he came across a shiny silver acorn about the size of a date. He quickly pocketed the item, knowing that’s what had tipped their rivals off to the presence of listening ears; this would definitely come in handy.

“Do they have anything good?” Philip asked, once again on two legs.

“Not that I’ve seen,” Daniel admitted as Philip went about searching the bodies. “I found the goblin’s listening device, but you can’t have it for your hoard.”

Philip wrinkled his nose. “Don’t think I’d want it anyways. It may be magical, but those things are fairly common as far as artefacts go.” He also took a moment to nudge the goliath, frowning when they didn’t respond at all. “Did we… did we kill them?”

Daniel frowned and went over to the aarakocra and held his dagger just below her beak. He waited with bated breath for a moment until a tiny cloud of condensation formed on the blade. “Well, the magic user is still alive, and pretty much every magic user at least has access to a healing spell so once she wakes up I’m sure they’ll be fine,” he reasoned, standing and sheathing his weapon. Philip looked almost a little disappointed that he hadn’t managed to actually kill anyone, but Daniel was relieved. He’d manage to live 124 years without killing anyone himself (he’d definitely had a hand in more than a few deaths, but he wasn’t present for them so they didn’t count) and he wasn’t too interested in ending that streak.

“Well, come on, then,” Philip yawned. As usual, as soon as the threat was gone he’d gone right back to his lazy sleepy state. “We’ve got a few more hours of daylight before we can actually get anywhere, and I don’t want to be even close to these fools when they wake up.”

Daniel grunted his agreement and started helping Philip break down their small camp before they set off on foot, making sure to stay in the shade of the trees. If they just so happened to forget a few healing potions then that was their business. By the time the sun had properly set they had made it to a nice open field great for takeoffs and had eaten their fill for their pre-flight meal. Fortunately, they had made it almost two-thirds of the way to the castle the previous night, and after only a half night of flight, they made it to the surrounding forrest. They spent an hour or so setting up a much sturdier camp than they’d had the previous night, then had a good meal. They were just getting comfortable when the first rays of dawn started shining over them.

“So, what all do you think we need to prepare for?” Daniel asked suddenly. “I mean, I know there’s going to be some traps but do you have any idea what kind? You know more about this place than I do.”

Philip huffed, thinking for a moment. “Well, there’s not a dragon in there, that’s for damn sure,” he said eventually. “It’s a lot smaller than most castles, so I don’t think there’s going to be anything too big in there.”

“Will you be able to get in there in your obnoxious lizard form or will you be stuck like this?” Daniel demanded, suddenly a bit more concerned. As a dragon, Philip could take on pretty much anything with no effort, but in his humanoid shape, all of his attacks were much weaker.

Philip shifted uncomfortably, tail lashing back and forth; he was just as - if not more so - uncomfortable as Daniel about fighting like this. “I’m afraid I’ll have to stay like this. If I go in there huge there’s a good chance I’ll wind up knocking in the walls and collapsing the whole thing right down on top of us.”

“Well, that makes things significantly harder,” Daniel frowned. “But you’re right, if you can’t fit in there then likely nothing else will either. Besides, we’ve faced worse challenges before; remember that time you managed to get arrested when we went to Lundy? They put you in adamantine chains and everything.”

“I think you wound up breaking three lockpicks trying to get me out,” Philip chuckled.

“I like to imagine I’ve gotten better at lockpicking by now,” Daniel grinned.

“Oh, what about that time you got kidnapped by mermaids?” Philip recalled fondly.

“That was awful!” Daniel pouted. “My potion was wearing off and I don’t think we even managed to get any treasure from that.”

“I dunno, you came away from it with a nice case of pneumonia.”

“You’re the worst!” Daniel whined. “Now, lay down so I can lay on you. I’m so exhausted I think I may actually sleep for a bit.”

Philip cocked a brow, knowing it was unusual for an elf to be so tired they craved actual sleep. Their fight from earlier must have taken more out of him than either of them realized. However, he didn’t say anything, just turned into his dragon form to enjoy the last few hours he had before he was crammed into his smaller form and stuck in a tiny castle for who knows how long. As he settled, curled up in and around himself, he made sure there was an elf-sized pocket of space, and as expected it didn’t stay empty for long.

Good morning, Daniel he thought lazily as he quickly drifted off to sleep.

Good morning, Philip.

_________

Waking up from a sleep his body actually needed would never stop being a weird sensation for Daniel. When he was just meditating he was very quick to come to his senses when he was done and always felt refreshed and reenergized, but when he woke up from a deep sleep it was like he was moving and seeing the world through a big vat of honey and he somehow always felt more tired than when he went to sleep. The one and the only reason he ever did it, other than light catnaps meant to waste time, was because he knew that the energy he got from sleep would last him longer and make him more alert whenever he was back to full functionality.

Another odd thing was waking up alone when he knew for a fact that he fell asleep surrounded by a dragon. In fact, said dragon was back in his humanoid form checking once again that they had everything they’d need. “Oh, good, you’re up,” he muttered, recoiling the rope in his hands. “You know, for a creature that doesn’t generally require sleep you sure do sleep for a long time. Do you think we should bring torches and or candles?”

Daniel graciously chose to ignore the comment about his sleeping and instead went about eating the breakfast that had been left out for him. “I don’t think so. I mean, the both of us have Darkvision, plus you have Blindvision and you can breathe fire.”

“What if for whatever reason we get separated and you need to light a fire or something?” Philip argued.

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Fine, we’ll take a few torches, but I’m only carrying one. You have to carry the rest.”

Philip scowled, but conceded. “Alright then. Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

“Neither of us is getting any younger,” Daniel shrugged, swallowing the last chunk of bread. He shouldered his bag (which was considered the lighter of the two) and led the way into the woods with a jaunty skip in his step. He hadn’t really done much delving into dungeons in his career as a thief; when he was younger he was much more interested in getting food to survive and when he joined up with Philip he just found that he preferred the challenge of stealing from the living. Philip had done more than his fair share of dungeoneering in his time and had an active distaste for it, but they generally had treasure that even he couldn’t ignore, plus Daniel always got a kick out of a new adventure.

Fortunately, Philip had managed to land a very short, uneventful walk from the castle, and Daniel waltzed right up to the door and yanked as hard as he could on the handle.

It didn’t budge.

Daniel coughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to hide the rosy blush colouring his normally purple-grey cheeks. “I, uh, I think it’s locked.”

Philip laughed and stepped forward, taking a door in each hand and effortlessly drawing them open. “You loosened it up for me,” he smirked, stepping inside.

Daniel followed close behind, still pink-cheeked and muttering something about being a nasty showoff. Inside the castle was almost pure darkness and as he blinked to better adjust his eyes he thought for a half second about lighting a torch before his pride got the better of him.

Fortunately, Philip took matters into his own hands. “Tiamet, it’s dark in here,” he swore, squinting. “Can’t you do some kind of magic that makes light? I haven’t been somewhere this dark in at least a century.”

Daniel flushed lightly. Yes, all Drow children were capable of and taught how to perform the cantrip Dancing Lights, but he had never been much good at it, and his lights were always dimmer than those of his peer’s. It was a bit of a sore spot to this day. “I’m not sure how much help it will be,” he mumbled, deliberately looking anywhere but at his friend. “Besides, it’s still light enough to see. When it’s so dark I’m blind we’ll talk about using it.”

Sensing Daniel’s reluctance to continue down that line of conversation, Philip charged deeper into the room. The entrance hall was grand with impressive wooden doors on all three side and a pair of grand staircases curving up to the second-floor landing. If he had to guess, at least one of them led to the grand hall and another to an entertainment room and the last to the kitchens. He turned to Daniel and said, “Left, right or centre?”

Daniel puzzled over his choices for a moment, wrinkling his nose before finally saying, “Left.”

They made their way into the room and Philip was delighted to see that he was correct in thinking this was the sitting room. Well, in its prime it had probably been a sitting room, but now it was devoid of anything other than a nearly shredded rug, a couple ugly paintings depicting the previous owners and a nice sized fireplace to keep the inhabitants warm during winter. Apparently, whatever curse was on this place wasn’t good enough to keep thieves out of this room.

He pointed out his observations to Daniel who just snorted. “Come on, this room is a waste of time. Let’s get on with the show.” He led the way on through the door to the next room which appeared to be a smaller dining area, probably for meetings and such. Things continued to be unproductive throughout the following rooms of the great hall and the kitchen, but when they made it to the larder, Daniel found something rather interesting.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed, throwing himself to the ground and digging under one of the shelves. A moment later he sat up with a delighted expression and a jar clutched containing what looked to be an orange sugar crystal in his hands. “This is mephit honey! This stuff is super hard to come by.”

Philip frowned; he, of course, knew about mephits - the impish little elementals that served no other purpose than to be a nuisance - but he had never heard of them making honey. Humanoids were so strange sometimes. “Surely it’s gone off by now. This place has been abandoned for almost two hundred years.”

Daniel gleefully shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong! For whatever reason, this stuff never goes bad; I should know, I carried around a jar for years when I was on the run to have as a treat. Right now you would have a hard time eating it because it’s sugared over, but we can melt it and you’ll understand.”

Philip narrowed his eyes suspiciously but took the jar being thrust at him. “And you want me to…?”

“Breathe fire on it? Yes, definitely.”

Still not one hundred percent convinced but still trusting, Philip produced a small flame that licked up and around the jar which he was slowly turning. As if by magic, Philip watched as the crystal inside began to melt until it turned back into liquid. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Daniel beamed. The jar was still very hot so he left it in Philip’s heatproof claws, allowing him to get a better look at it. To be perfectly honest, it looked and seemed to act like normal honey, but it somehow looked… alive. It was a much more orange and red colour as opposed to gold and with the way the light shifted in and around it seemed to glow and swirl around all on its own. “I think this one is from a magma mephit,” Daniel explained. “That usually has a spicier orange taste. It’s still sweet and hard like all mephit honey but it’s got different stuff in it. I had a jar of ice mephit honey and it was kind of minty and bitter.”

“Do you want to have some now?”

Daniel bit his bottom lip. “I don’t know, shouldn’t we be getting this thing done with?”

Philip rolled his eyes and started digging around in his bag for a spoon. “It’s not like we’re on a schedule or something and it’s not like this has to take all night. Have some damn honey.”

Daniel grinned and took the spoonful of honey when it was offered to him and popped it right in his mouth. As predicted, it was sharp and spicy like peppers but had a sour sweetness like oranges. Somehow, it even managed to make his belly and chest feel warm as it went down and he was suddenly assaulted with highly romanticized memories of his time spent wandering the Underdark. “Fuck, you need to try this now,” he moaned, shoving the spoon back to Philip.

Philip chuckled, obviously doubting the endorsement, but as soon as his lips closed around the handle of the spoon his eyes shot open. “Mother of mountains, that’s good,” he mumbled around the spoon still in his mouth, looking like he’d just had a religious experience.

Daniel laughed and took the jar back, ignoring the quiet growl he received. “Come on then. This castle won’t explore itself.”

“Well, we’ve done about all we can down here,” Philip said. “Upstairs it is.”

They made their way back out to the grand entryway and up the stairs. Standing tall and proud at the top were a pair of plate armour suits both holding matching longswords. “I wonder why these haven’t been taken,” Daniel muttered as he investigated the armour.

“Maybe they just assumed they’d get better stuff later,” Philip shrugged. “I mean it’s nice armour and all, but unless you suddenly needed armour I don’t see why you’d want it.”

“Yeah,” Daniel agreed easily, deciding it was time they moved on.

However, the castle apparently the castle had decided it wasn’t time to move on. As soon as they stepped off the balcony to investigate there was a loud creaking as a quiet whistle and they both turned around. The armour had suddenly sprung to life and was swaying back and forth like it was being worn by someone made of porridge while the swords were up in the air slashing about as easily as when a master swordsman held them.

Daniel grinned at Philip and pulled out his shortsword. “Honestly I’m rather glad something has happened on this trip. It was getting dull.” Without waiting for a response he quickly lunged forward to attack the suit of armour nearest to him but completely missed. “Um… whoops?”

Philip rolled his eyes and swiped at a sword with his claws. The hit landed perfectly and sent it spinning through the air to hit the other sword which didn’t much appreciate getting hit and flew back with a wide slash that Philip was lucky enough to block with the thick hide of his tail.

As if it was only just now understanding what was happening, the suit of armour Daniel had attacked slammed its entire weight against him, sending the drow sprawling to the floor with the wind knocked from his lungs. Following the attack, the sword Philip hit slashed down at him as well, making him cry out.

At the sound of Daniel’s distress, Philip glanced over which gave the second suit of armour a chance to attack. The first time it threw itself against him he was able to keep standing, but it attacked again and this time he was sent stumbling back. Fortunately, as it was about to attack for the third time, Daniel swooped in and smacked it away with the flat of his sword and it collapsed in a heap.

Philip growled under his breath, growing tired of this fight. Noticing that the remaining suit of armour and the two swords were conveniently right next to one another, he sucked in a deep breath and let out a blisteringly hot cone of flames. When the flames died down, the only things left indicating there had been anything there in the first place were a few charred - mostly beyond recognition - piles of metal. Philip smirked, pleased with his work. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

Daniel crossed his arms and pouted but followed along. “You always manage to get the final hit in with your dumb fire breath,” he whined.

“Benefits of adventuring with a dragon, I suppose,” Philip mused, wandering towards the left.

The first room they came across was bare save for the giant bed frame dominating the space. Assuming it had at one point been a bedroom, Daniel frowned, noticing something was off. “Philip, we’re pointed north, yeah?”

There was a grunt of agreement as he dug through a mostly empty trunk.

“People usually put windows on the north wall to keep cool in summer, yeah?”

Another grunt.

“Then why haven’t we seen a single god damn window in this place?”

Philip suddenly looked up, what once had been a fine silk scarf in one hand. “What did you say?”

Daniel gestured at the wall before them which was flat stone and nothing else. “There haven’t been any windows on this place at all. The great hall, kitchen, hell there wasn’t even one in the larder.”

“That… is odd, yes,” Philip admitted slowly. He stepped forward and placed an ear to the wall, rapping on it slightly. “It’s empty on the other side.”

“Well, if it’s leading out to the woods, yeah, it’s empty.”

“No, there’s definitely a room on the other side,” Philip argued. “The stone is warmer than it would be if it lead straight outside.”

“Is it a servant’s passage?” Daniel guessed.

Philip frowned. “No, I don’t think so. Look at the corners of the room. I don’t think this wall was put in by professionals.”

“Do you think it’s part of the traps this place is known for? Because other than that armour there haven’t been many traps.”

“Could be,” Philip shrugged. “Could be nothing. We’ll have to find the entrance to know for sure.”

Daniel hummed in agreement, shoving a nice enough looking gold candlestick in his bag. They left that room and continued on to the next room, whose door looked much more imposing and regal. “Lord and lady’s room?” he guessed. He reached out to turn the knob, but it refused to budge. “Oh, yeah?” he muttered, crouching down and pulling out his lock picking kit. “You want to keep me out? We’ll see about that.” He fiddled about with the long delicate tools before he heard the ever-satisfying click of a lock being opened. However, as he was about to pull the tools out there came the dreaded clunk of a lock being fastened and the near-silent snap of his tools breaking cleanly in half.

Everything was silent for a moment before Philip said, “Well, that was unexpected.”

Daniel scowled up at him as he gathered his remaining tools. “Oh, really? I  would never have guessed. Next, you’ll be telling me that you spit fire during battles or something.”

Philip snarled, but Daniel just narrowed his eyes further, completely unintimidated. “Sulking like this will solve nothing,” he said instead. “It’s obviously got some kind of enchantment on it that keeps the lock from being opened. Now, if there’s a magic lock, there must be some kind of magic key we can find.”

Daniel sighed deeply but grudgingly agreed. The rooms to the left were much the same as the first one they came across, empty save for a few trinkets they took for themselves. Philip found a glass ball full of smoke that swirled around, a golden whistle and an odd stone block that was somehow weightless. Daniel came away with a shard of obsidian that burned his hand when he held it, a set of bone pipes, a solid silver skull about the size of a coin and a multi-coloured stone disk. He planned on selling the skull and pipes in town, but Philip said the obsidian and disk were charged with spells he could potentially use in battle.

They made it back around to the right half of the floor and found a room that appeared to have a second room attached to it. Daniel went to open it until there was a loud grunt and the sound of something very big sitting down on something very small. He turned back to Philip a bit pale-faced and shook his head.

“You don’t want to go investigate it?” Philip hissed quietly.

“Not particularly, no,” Daniel squeaked, quickly shuffling towards the door. “You can go in and have fun getting the shit kicked out of you by whatever is in there, but I’m going to be not here.”

Philip rolled his eyes but he, too, saw the error in picking a fight they didn’t exactly need to be in. They both made their way back into the hall and up the flight of stairs conveniently right next to where they were. The highest floor of the castle also appeared to be the bleakest . While it was true that the other two floors showed definite signs of wear and theft, they also had a distinct feeling that they at least used to be elegant with the ornate rugs and furniture and paintings. This floor, however, was completely stone from what Philip could see and had never been anything but the bare essentials. “I think we found the servants’ quarters.”

“Yeah,” Daniel murmured back, wandering up the main hall of the floor. When he got to two doors, one on either side of the hall, he opened the right and walked into what used to be the servants’ sleeping chambers, complete with a chest of belongings. “Philip, come here! I think I’ve found something!”

Philip came as he was called, but unfortunately, Daniel’s call hadn’t only alerted him. From the beds appeared a sleepy looking, but very large bugbear. When they finished blinking the sleep from their eyes, they focused on Daniel and Philip and let out a shout of alarm.

Philip leapt into action, hitting the creature in the stomach with his tail, cutting their cry for help off in a gurgle. Daniel quickly pounced on the winded bugbear, both daggers out and stabbed them right in the chinks of the armour. The bugbear roared in pain before bringing the morning star in their hands straight down on Daniel’s back twice. The first hit landed painfully, but Daniel managed to drop down to the floor and dodge out of the way of the second attack so it instead landed on the bugbear.

While they tussled Philip took an opportunity to morph his mouth into a much more dragon shape, which he then snapped down on the bugbear’s arm as they reached back to swing at Daniel again. While Philip had it restrained, Daniel drew his sword and with a decisive movement, stabbed it into the bugbear’s side.

“Enough!” the bugbear growled out. “I forfeit, you win! Take what you want and go!”

Daniel and Philip shared a quick glance and a nod before Philip brought a fist down on the top of their head, knocking them unconscious. They glanced up at one another and made eye contact for a moment before they both burst out into snickering. “Come on, show me what they were protecting!”

Philip chuckled and went over to the three small chests gathered in the corner and began to dig through them. However, it seemed that with everything he found he became more and more frustrated. “It’s garbage!” he declared. “It’s all garbage! The most interesting thing in here is a broken sword hilt and a knitting needle that claims to be unbendable, but there’s no mate.”

“What?” Daniel snapped, stomping over to investigate. Philip was right and all three chests were virtually empty and among the few things he did see were empty bottles, a bit of faded parchment, and a tiny cage. “This is all useless; we can’t even sell it!”

“I know,” growled Philip, more than a little displeased. He stood in a huff and hissed at the unconscious bugbear for wasting his time while Daniel went about collecting his daggers from their back. “Come on, maybe there’s something actually half decent across the hall.”

However, it seemed that they hadn’t managed to halt the bugbear’s call of alarm early enough before because just outside were two dire wolves sniffing around trying to find some way to help their now fallen master. Before either of them could react, one of the wolves leapt at Philip’s teeth bared, but the dragon simply grasped it in his claws and sent it skittering down the hall. The second wolf snarled and attacked Daniel who stepped aside and stabbed it with the daggers still in his hands.

“We don’t have time for this,” Daniel snapped, shoving away the first wolf back towards its pack mate. “Roast them for Lolth’s sake!”

Philip nodded then took in a deep breath and let out a bright cone of red-hot fire. One of the wolves made it out of the blast only mostly on fire, but before it could do anything Daniel swept in and stabbed it with his daggers. The dire wolf let out a short whimper of pain before collapsing with the other. Without a second glance, they made it into the other room which was a direct mirror of the other and most likely served the same purpose. Even the chests were in the same spot and they eagerly dove into them to see what they could find.

“Oh, this is much better!” Daniel crowed, pulling out a pair of statues. One was of a rather smug halfling, but the other was of some creature straight from his nightmares which he showed to Philip. “Okay, I don’t know much about magic, but this one creeps me the hell out so there has to be some kind of magic on it.”

Philip glanced up from the painted egg display he was delicately clutching in his claws and actually flinched when he saw what Daniel was holding out to him. “I’ve had one of those used on me. It’s got some kind of necromancy spell put on it, and judging by the vibe I’m getting from it, it’s a pretty powerful one. Have you seen this egg? It’s wonderful!”

Daniel peered in close enough to see that every bit of the shell had been carefully hand-painted with scenes of human suffering in horrifying detail. It made him a little sick to his stomach, but even he could see the time and effort that went into making it and that was exactly what Philip loved more than anything. “It’s great.”

Philip carefully put it in his pack and picked up a vest that looked to be covered in at least a hundred near uselessly tiny pockets, but tossed it back into the box. “Well, I think that’s all we’re going to get here, yeah?”

“Onwards, then,” Daniel grinned, leading the way back into the hall. Luckily there wasn’t anything waiting for them this time and they made it to the overcrowded dining area unmolested. “What the fuck happened in here?”

“The wall collapsed,” Philip said unhelpfully.

Daniel glared at him before going in so he could closer investigate. As Philip had pointed out, the wall had fallen in right near the corner of the room. As he looked around he noticed that the other side of the wall was empty and led into a long narrow hallway. “You know, I’m sorry I criticized you for wanting to bring torches because it’s way too dark in here for me.”

Philip smirked at once again being right as he too came to look at the wall. “I guess this was the servants' passage at one time,” he noted.

“I bet it has a way into that room downstairs,” Daniel grinned, already stepping over the rubble into the passage. “Hand me a torch.” Philip rolled his eyes but handed over a lit torch. Daniel looked around for a bit before his eyes settled on a pile of rocks that was probably supposed to be the stairs. “Well, I guess we’re not going that way.”

“Left it is then!” Philip said cheerfully, walking off. Before he got even a couple metres away he stopped and said, “Ah. Well, I think we’ve finally found the thing that actually turns people away from this place.”

Daniel cautiously stepped forward to see lots of spikes. They were all at least knee high and wickedly sharp, and they completely filled the corridor from wall to wall and down a good five or so metres. “Can’t you just fly us across?”

“Normally, yes, but this hall is too narrow for me to spread my wings.”

Daniel frowned a moment in thought before he snapped, grinning. “I’ve got an idea. Sit on the floor with your feet flat to the wall.”

Philip narrowed his eyes but did as he was told as Daniel did the exact same thing behind him. “All right, now what?”

“Push against my back at like a quarter strength and when I say ‘go’ take a step with your right, my left foot. Okay? Go!” To both of their surprise, they managed to get the one foot off the ground. “Okay, next one!” Again it worked. “Next!” They somehow managed to actually walk their way up the walls of the narrow hall until they comfortably cleared the spikes. “Okay, now we’re going to go down the hall.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Against my better judgement, yes.”

“Then we go down the hall.”

It was slow, difficult work, and Daniel actually slipped once, but they did make it. When they were back on flat ground Daniel brushed his hands off with a look of surprise. “Wow. I thought for sure we wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Philip turned on the young drow and got very close to his face. “If you do anything like that ever again I won’t have to worry about spikes killing you because I’ll do it myself,” he hissed, and Daniel at least had the decency to look sheepish.

“Everything’s fine though?” he said cautiously. Philip just growled and he quickly and wisely shut his mouth.

Fortunately, Philip’s attention was grabbed by a set of three gold chests in what should have been the corner tower of the castle. After giving Daniel one final glare he made his way over and tried to open one of them. Unfortunately, it was locked as would be expected so Daniel knelt down beside it and started fiddling with his lockpick set again. With a resounding click, the chest swung open and he moved on, meeting a similar success.

“Oh, yes, this is much better,” Philip cooed, pulling a long sword inscribed with runes from its sheath. “I may actually use a weapon if it looks as nice as this.”

Daniel smirked, grabbing a small pouch of fine, black dust. “Do you know what this is? This is Dust of Disappearing This is going to be so useful when we actually have to sneak into someplace.”

Philip hummed in delight as he investigated the armour he had found and thought about how it would look tossed on his hoard. He gathered up the rest of the useful items, including a lantern that turned invisible things visible, a second set of daggers in case anything happened to Daniel’s, and a wand used for detecting magic. “Come on; now that I know there’s useful stuff in here I’m a bit more excited about the rest of this place.” He started confidently strutting down the hall, but he didn’t get more than ten steps away when his foot suddenly slipped out from under him. Eyes wider than they had ever been, Philip fell straight on his ass in the least graceful tumble of any dragon any time anywhere.

“O-oh my fuck,” Daniel positively cackled, leaning against a wall and clutching his sides. “You should have seen your face!”

Philip scowled, refusing to acknowledge the warmth blooming under his cheek scales, as he carefully scooted along the floor until he was on normal ground and could stand. “Okay, so slicked floor. How do you suggest we get across this time?”

Daniel just grinned and started running towards the slick floor. Just before he hit unstable land he leapt in the air, pulled a tight flip and landed in a power slide which sent him whizzing down the hall. When he got to the end his feet hit friction first and he turned a somersault and landed perfectly on his feet. “I’d recommend doing it just like that!”

Philip grumbled something about show off elves and how they’d get their comeuppance as he gingerly stepped onto the slicked floor. Clinging to the wall with all his strength he slid forward one foot at a time, slowly but steadily making his way to safety and completely ignoring Daniel’s heckling for him to hurry up.

“Took you long enough, old man,” Daniel sneered.

“Well, that’s certainly no way to treat your elders,” a rough, high-pitched voice said from behind him.

“No, it’s not,” agreed another, deeper and more gravely than the first.

Daniel whipped around to see what looked like the statues of two hulking dog demons standing in the corner, facing towards one another as if they were gossiping. “Did you hear that? I could have sworn someone said something,” he asked, stepping forward to investigate. “Is anyone behind there? Come out and talk if you think you’re so clever.”

“Oh, we know we’re clever,” the high voice said.

“However, it’s quite obvious by now you aren’t,” the deep one added.

Philip scowled at the statues for a moment before his eyes widened and he shouted, “Daniel, look out! Those aren’t statues, they’re-”

“We’re gargoyles!” the high voice delighted as the other gargoyle darted its arms forwards to ensnare Daniel in a tight, bruising grip sinking its claws into his sides as he let out a pained yelp. The first gargoyle took its chance to attack Philip while he was distracted with Daniel’s situation, managing to get a deep gash across his arm. Snarling, Philip retaliated with a cone of fire right in its stone face causing it to leap back to its partner wailing “That hurt!”

“Don’t make this any worse than it has to be,” the other said slowly and sunk his claws deeper in Daniel’s side. “Leave the loot where you found it and get out and we’ll let both of you live.”

“Yeah! Maybe we’ll let you live!”

“You think you can kill me?” Philip snarled, fanning his wings as far as they’d go and puffing out his chest. “I think you’ll find that I can eat a pair of gargoyles like you for a mid-afternoon snack.”

“That’s true, but your friend here doesn’t seem to be as sturdy as you are,” the second pointed out, nodding at Daniel.

Philip growled lowly in his chest at the now very real threat. He was a dragon for the mountain’s sake! How dare these puny monsters challenge him or threaten his charge? He was about to tell them they had crossed the wrong dragon on the wrong day when his gaze fell on Daniel who had been squirming in the gargoyle’s grasp the whole time. Clever drow that he was he had somehow managed to worm his hand into the pocket he was storing his multi-coloured stone in and had his fingers pressed on the yellow section. Philip turned his attention back to the gargoyles with a smarmy grin. “You’d be surprised at how he overcomes his lack of sturdiness.”

The first gargoyle wrinkled its face. “And just what is that-”

It was very suddenly interrupted by a cube of lightning emanating from Daniel’s stone, freeing him and sending the two gargoyles hurtling back into the wall. “Let’s go,” he gasped, grabbing Philip’s arm and dragging him away from the fight. “Let’s go now!”

Philip quickly followed behind him, more focused on shielding Daniel (who wasn’t looking so great after three fights and getting captured by stone monsters) from any attacks from behind. Unfortunately, because he was so focused on protecting Daniel and Daniel so focused on just getting away, neither of them noticed Philip stepping on a pressure plate. With absolutely no warning, the floor tilted down into a chute that sent them bouncing against walls as they made their unwitting way down, down, down. As if to add insult to injury (or maybe injury to insult) there were four light hammers on the way down all positioned to perfectly smack both of them right between the eyes.

As soon as they were on solid ground Daniel collapsed face first to the floor clutching his forehead. “This is the worst day of my life!” he wailed, rolling back and forth.

Philip rubbed his forehead as well, but mostly in sympathy as he knew the damage didn’t affect him as much as it did his friend. “I think it may be time to heal up,” he said in a gentle voice even Daniel rarely got to hear. Daniel, in turn, just whimpered a bit and allowed himself to be propped right side up against a wall while Philip dug in his bag for one of the health potions he’d insisted Daniel bring along. “Come on then,” he nearly cooed tilting the blue mixture into Daniel’s mouth. As soon as the liquid touched his tongue, Daniel started convulsing but Philip managed to make him drink the whole thing and slapped a hand over his mouth to keep him from spitting it back up.

When he finally swallowed the last of it, Daniel gave a mighty shudder and shoved Philip’s hand away so he could curl up in a ball. “I hate that stuff,” he panted, trying to regain his breath as he recovered from the health potion.

“Well, do you at least feel any better?”

Daniel was quiet for a moment as if taking inventory before he shrugged. “I mean I feel like death but I don’t feel like I’m about to die from getting the shit kicked out of me.”

Philip chuckled and handed him the waterskin to at least help wash the taste out of his mouth. “Well, you up for starting again or do you want to call it quits and go home?”

Daniel shoved himself up and looked around. “Can we even get out?” he wondered. “I have no idea where the world’s shittiest slide dumped us on our asses.”

Not a moment after Daniel said that Philip noticed a smell on the air: old ashes. “I… I think I might actually know where we are,” he said cautiously, following his nose towards the corner. Sure enough, when he found where the scent was strongest he noticed a little hole no bigger than Daniel’s pinky in the mortar of the wall. Curious, he stuck a claw in the hole and started scratching until it was wide enough for him to look through. “Yeah, we’re right outside of the kitchen.”

“That’s neat and all and I’m super interested that you managed to figure out where we are,” Daniel said, far more interested in the treasure he’d found. Most of it had just been gems and coins, but two things had garnered his attention. “Listen to this it’s kinda fucked up.” He put a small rectangle box of metal to Philip’s ear, and much to the dragon’s horror he soon heard the scuttering of a hundred spiders. “Cool, isn’t it?” Daniel grinned, taking it away. “And look! This is like a reverse flint. It sparks when wet!”

Philip cocked a brow at his excited companion, again wondering how he always managed to go from being on Death’s door to rambunctious and eager to start any fight he thought he could win. “That’s super useful. Too bad you don’t have someone who can literally breathe fire, that’d be really convenient.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Shove off. I almost died; I’m allowed to have all the fun I want.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a light glinting at the end of the hall. “Come on, maybe there’s a way out this way.”

Philip nodded and they were almost to the end when they heard someone talking. “Do you smell it, Lucy,” an oily male voice cooed. “Can you find it for me, darling?” There was a deep bark for an answer. “What was that? You say we have visitors?”

Daniel froze, back instinctively against the wall. He motioned for Philip to do the same and he did, both of them holding their breath.

“You’re here, I know you are,” the oily voice said. “I can hear you and Lucy smelled you.” The creature stepped forward and Daniel took a sharp breath in for they were being hunted by an imp - a small, bright red man with bat wings and a scorpion tail. The imp heard Daniel’s breath and he turned so their noses were right next to each other. “Found you,” he said with a nasty grin.

Philip went to attack him, but he apparently heard him coming because with a snap of the fingers he was invisible. “Get out here and fight, you coward.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I will,” the imp cooed. “I just wanted to make sure Lucy got her fair share, too.” Daniel and Philip turned around to see a giant black dog with fire in her eyes and foam around her six-inch fangs. The imp appeared with another snap of the fingers. “Get ‘em, girl.” The hellhound bonded forward, fangs bared and pounced on Philip, who snarled in pain as she sunk her teeth into his shoulder. Daniel went to attack the beast with his drawn sword, but a sharp sting in his thigh brought him down to his knees. When he turned the imp just grinned at him and snapped out of sight.

“Make him visible!” Philip snarled, slashing at the hellhound with his own claws and teeth.  

“How?!”

“I don’t know, maybe some fucking magic!”

“Right, right!” Daniel took a deep breath and focused all he had on the childhood memory of learning magic with his peers. He ignored his past failures at performing the spell and concentrated on the spell itself. Suddenly, everything was glowing with a brilliant violet light, including the hellhound Philip had by now soundly bested, and the imp. Who happened to be right in front of him.

“Well, shit,” the imp muttered under his breath.

Daniel just grinned and slashed him with his sword which sent him stumbling towards Philip who took great pleasure in smacking him against the wall with his tail. There was a large puff of smoke that cleared as quickly as it appeared, taking the imp and hellhound with it. “I have to admit, I was impressed with the magic,” Philip grinned. “I thought you said you’d never do magic.”

Daniel sputtered indignantly. “You’re the one who told me to!”

“I was actually expecting you to use the lantern,” Philip shrugged. “You know, the one we just got that turns invisible things visible?”

Daniel slapped his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes. “I forgot we had that.”

Philip just chuckled and nudged him gently. “Come on, this way was a dead end. Grab what we can from the chests and let’s go.” Within the chests, he managed to find a shelter orb that would fetch a nice price on the market along with a faintly glowing crystal that wasn’t magic, but that he could probably convince someone was.

“These are for you,” Daniel muttered, distracted, shoving a set of pretty earrings shaped like teardrops at him as he investigated the pair of daggers in his other hand. “Holy shit I think this is a poison dagger.”

“Can I see?” Philip requested. Daniel grunted and handed one over while he went through the rest of the stuff, shoving anything that looked even remotely valuable in his bag. Philip returned the dagger when he was done investigating it and with an impressed nod said, “Yeah, it’s definitely poisonous; magic, too. Keep an eye on that thing.”

Daniel nodded and attached the sheaths to either side of his belt, then turned and made his way back down the hall. Things were quiet as they made their way back to where they had been, and on down the hall, but just before they got to the corner, Daniel heard some unfortunately familiar chattering. “Quiet,” he hissed. “There’s some mephits down in the corner. If we’re careful we can get the jump on them.”

“What kind of mephits?”

“Probably magma if the mephit honey is any indication.”

Philip scowled. “I’m guessing fire won’t be super helpful here, then.”

Daniel bit his lip in thought before snapping his fingers and retrieving the multi-coloured stone disk. “You said this had Ray of Frost on it, yeah? Magma mephits hate that shit.”

Philip nodded and took the stone. “So I’m guessing we’re doing a range attack?”

“Yeah,” Daniel said, pulling out his sling. He didn’t use it often, but he was rather glad of it now. “On three? One… two… three.”

As one, they leapt into action, Philip shooting a spell at the one on the left while Daniel shot a rock at the one on the right. Unfortunately, Daniel didn’t do quite as much damage as he’d hoped with his sling and the two mephits that Philip didn’t freeze near solid didn’t enjoy being attacked, and the one in the middle that hadn’t gotten hit yet flew straight at Philip while the other shot a cone of flame right at them. Fortunately, Philip managed to step in front of Daniel so he could take the worst of the damage.  

Before the flames even managed to completely die down Daniel leapt over Philip’s shoulder with his sword drawn, slashing it across the startled mephit’s chest, then ducked down to allow Philip to follow up with a harsh smack with his tail sending it flying back. The third mephit had by now defrosted itself and together the three of them breathed fire at Daniel and Philip. Philip bent forward to shield Daniel with his wings, but one of his legs got caught in the worst of the flames. However, this didn’t stop Daniel because he dashed forward and slashed all three of them with one stroke.

As soon as he did two of the mephits began to shake violently and Philip had barely enough time to grab Daniel tight to his chest and turn around before they both exploded. The final mephit shrieked and swooped in for an attack, but Philip held up the stone and shot another Ray of Frost at it, freezing it solid so it couldn’t explode.

“Okay, so maybe attacking three fire-breathing elementals with no cover while my fire-proof friend had to jump in to keep me from being charbroiled wasn’t the best idea,” Daniel said after a moment of silence.

Philip snorted and shoved him good-naturedly. “If you crave death so much you could just tell me; that way I’d at least get a good meal out of the deal.”

Daniel barked out a startled laugh and stumbled off to see if he could find something of value in the mephits’ nest of three chests. He threw open the middle one and was delighted to find a full set of Sylvan battle regalia including armour, shield, and a scimitar. It was all very pretty and somehow even the leather armour and wooden shield managed to shine with a rainbow pearlescence. He quickly shod his regular armour and posed with his arms out. “What do you think?”

“You look lovely,” Philip said, not bothering to look up and instead focusing on the chest to the left. Daniel was about to get upset over the lack of attention but Philip interrupted him by saying, “Do we have some kind of stick somewhere?”

Daniel frowned and bent forward to investigate the chest as well. He could tell there was definitely something wrong but he’d be damned if he could put a finger on it. “Er, not that I know of? I mean we have a couple of swords, but I don’t think those would be very helpful?”

Philip bit his lower lip and squinted harder at the box as if that would help him unlock its secrets. “Okay, so we’re going to back way up and you’re going to shoot both of these boxes with your sling, okay?”

Daniel nodded and once they were a safe distance away he grabbed another rock from the ground and hurled it towards the chest on the left, hitting it with a resounding thunk. As soon as the rock made contact, the lid of the chest flew open to reveal a set very sharp teeth and a long sticky looking purple tongue. It thrashed about for a moment trying to find its prey but when there was nothing to be found it quieted down and went back to looking just like a regular chest. White-faced, Daniel looked up at Philip who nodded and he sent another rock flying at the other chest which did the exact same thing as the other.

When the chests were completely still Daniel whirled around to face Philip. “What were those things?”

“Mimics,” Philip said gruffly. “They sit around looking like normal chests but if you try to open one they eat you.” “Why haven’t I ever seen one before?”

Philip shrugged. “We normally rob places that still have people living in them. Mimics usually only go for places that have been abandoned.”

“Well, I’m sure as fuck glad I’ve never had to deal with one,” Daniel shuddered. “How did you even know they were there?”

“I didn’t, that’s the thing. They’re impossible to distinguish from a normal chest until they attack; that’s why I had you attack them first. I just smelled something off in that corner and I wasn’t willing to risk it.” He grinned, all of his abnormally pointy teeth showing. “Normally I would have just let you open it so I could see the look on your face when you were attacked by a box, but we’ve already had one close call today. How are you doing, by the way?”

Daniel grimaced at the reminder of their fight with the mephits. “Well, considering I’ve been caught mostly on fire twice in the past ten minutes after drinking a health potion that feels more like poison than anything I’m doing pretty good.”

Philip narrowed his eyes. “And on an objective scale?”

“Probably somewhere around a twenty-nine out of seventy.”

Philip snorted out a laugh. “I have no idea where you got those numbers but I think you’re gonna be fine for now.”

“Honestly I’ll say just about anything to keep you from forcing that health potion down my throat.”

Philip thumped him on the forehead. “How’s this: I won’t make you take it until we come up against something I don’t want to fight.”

“Yeah, but you want to fight everything.”

“Well, then it’s your lucky day.” Daniel chuckled and Philip smiled and shoved him down the hall. “Go on. And be careful you don’t accidentally knock into one of those things.”

Daniel made a face at the mere thought of touching one of those monsters, and with his eyes narrowed at them and his back flush to the wall he scooted past with Philip following behind as normal. He made his way around the corner and let out a deep sigh. “More spikes,” he warned Philip. “And this time they’re in a pit. Since you didn’t seem to care for my solution of getting over them last time, why don’t you figure it out?”

Philip snorted. If I recall correctly you carry around a set of pitons. You could just scale the wall like a normal person.”

Daniel pouted but fished the small spikes from his bag. “You sure know how to suck the fun right out of everything,” he muttered, quickly and skillfully making his way across the pit. When he was on the other side he turned to Philip who was still in the same spot. “Well? What now? How are you getting over here?”

“You’ll see!” Philip called back, grinning. He looked over the pit once more just to be sure he could do what he was planning, then he took a deep breath and ran as fast as he could.

When his foot hit the very edge of the floor he pushed off with both legs with all his strength, sending him hurtling through the air towards Daniel. However, the pit was a good ten feet long and even at his best he had no hopes of clearing it with a mere jump, so when he felt himself start to fall he unfurled his wings as wide as the hall would let him and flapped tucking into a backflip and landed perfectly safe on the other side.

Daniel narrowed his eyes and shoved him in the chest. “Bloody show off you are.”

Philip grinned and bowed. “Don’t worry, even at my worst I’m nothing next to you.” Daniel just sputtered, his blush dark enough that it even coloured his grey skin. Philip snickered and pulled him along by the shoulder. “Let’s go the stairs are right there, and I bet we can get out of here if we make it to the next floor.”

Daniel grunted and moved ahead, starting up the stairs. He very suddenly wished he hadn’t gone up first when about halfway up the step beneath his foot suddenly gave way sending him tumbling forward and his left foot dropped into a hole lined with wickedly pointed knives all facing downwards. The blades had torn his leather boots to ribbons and he could already feel tiny cuts all the way up to his knee so in a tiny voice he squeaked out, “Uh, Philip? Can I get some help please?”

Philip wrinkled his brow in confusion but when he looked down and saw the problem he went a bit pale. “Well, shit.”

Daniel cackled hysterically. “Have I ever told you I fucking hate dungeons? There’s never any decent shit in here because everybody’s already taken it,  there are traps fucking everywhere, and monsters of every shape and size crawling all over the damn place. I really just want to get this fucking mirror and go home so we can swear to only rob living people. I hate this.”

“I know,” Philip rumbled as soothingly as possible. “I know you hate it and as soon as we get out of here I promise you never have to go in another dungeon for the rest of your life.” He reached down into the hole to grab one of the knives and started wiggling it back and forth to break it. “Now if you just hold still-”

“What are you doing?” Daniel screeched, grabbing fistfuls of Philip’s hair. “I swear to fuck if you make me lose my leg I will de-wing you! You’ll never fly again!”

Philip rolled his eyes and managed to snap the blade off its holster and slapped it on the ground. “There. Happy? Now, hold still.” Unfortunately, the remaining eleven knives didn’t go quite as smoothly; Philip’s hand was severely cut up and Daniel got stabbed in the calf more than once, but Daniel was free. Philip took one look at Daniel’s leg and winced. “Okay, so you definitely need another potion if you even want to make it to the top of the stairs.”

“I won’t even argue with you,” Daniel panted, eyes screwed up in pain. He grabbed one of his remaining potions and uncorked it with his teeth then proceeded to drink the entire thing. As usual, it took a moment for it to settle in his stomach but when it did he had to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from being sick. However, it did do exactly as advertised and his leg magically stitched itself back together; it wasn’t perfectly healed, but it would be enough to get him out of this damn castle and home where he could rest. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Philip said, staring at his palm. He focused for a moment on all the magic coursing through his body that kept him alive and directed it to his injuries which started to fade until they were just faint red marks. “Alright, no more games, we need to get out of here. Follow behind me.”

Daniel nodded and Philip marched up the stairs, careful to test every step with his tail before putting any weight on it. They made their way up to the next floor without any issue. Daniel tried to pass him as to take the lead as usual, but Philip stuck out an arm to hold him back and glared. He took a step forward and right onto a pressure plate that sent a hailstorm of ball bearings raining down right on him causing him to lose his balance. He turned and glared at Daniel who had started giggling like this was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

“Holy shit I’m so glad that was you and not me,” he wheezed between laughs. “I just don’t think I could take being on the shit end of another one of these traps without straight up bawling my eyes out.”

Philip growled but his glare lessened as he shakily made his way back to his feet. This was even worse than that time Daniel had dragged him out to that frozen lake so they could slide around on the ice. “We need to figure out how to get across.”

“You need to figure it out,” Daniel corrected. “I already know what I’m doing.” Without another word, he tied his rope around Philip’s waist and ever so gracefully glided across the slippery marbles.

He very slowly started to pull Philip along but the moment he started to move Philip fell to the floor with a loud thump. “Just drag me like this,” he sighed, draping one arm over his eyes while Daniel giggled and tugged him along. Eventually, but not soon enough to save his pride, he was back on his feet. “Let’s, er, let’s go,” he mumbled. Daniel once again tried to take the lead, but Philip grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him back.

This was rather convenient because as soon as Daniel was behind him an arrow whizzed through the air directly where he was standing. Philip whirled around and snarled with his wings spread out to brush either side of the corridor and keep Daniel from view. He narrowed his eyes to see further down the hall and as he did another arrow came at them, but missed by a mile. From the gloom two gnolls emerged, their hulking furry bodies hunched over at the shoulder and saliva dripping from their snouts.

Before Philip had any time to react, Daniel had scrambled up his back and thrown both of his daggers at each of the creatures, piercing each one in the thigh. “Can’t you sit back for two minutes?” Philip scoffed, rolling his eyes. He took one look at the gnolls and decided that any time spent fighting them was time wasted, so he took in a deep breath and roasted both gnolls in one go.

“No fair, you ruined my daggers,” Daniel scowled, investigating the blackened blades that used to be his knives. “I mean, they were the extra ones that we picked up, but I still liked them.”

Philip scoffed and picked them up and put them in Daniel’s bag, unaffected by their scorching heat. “Once they cool off they’ll be fine for throwing. Just don’t throw around your good ones like that.”

Daniel scoffed under his breath but sulkily followed behind Philip who found the gnolls’ bag that he presumed they had been stuffing with the loot they had come across. “Hey, you know how to use a crossbow, yeah?” Philip asked handing over the weapon. “I’m pretty sure that one’s got some magic on it, too.”

Daniel frowned but took the crossbow to examine it. “Yeah, I know how to use one,” he said, stashing it in his own bag. “I don’t like using them though. I much prefer one on one when I can.”

“Don’t I know it,” Philip grumbled under his breath; Daniel pursed his lips and smacked him on the back of the head. “What is this thing? I saw you looking at one in town the other day.”

Daniel snatched up the long, thin metal tube and grinned so wide his cheeks hurt. “This, dear Philip,” he said grandly, “is a Chime of Opening. You can use it to unlock anything.”

Philip cocked a brow. “You think it would work on the main chambers?”

“Only one way to find out.” He then tugged the bag away so he could look through it himself. “Holy shit, they had the best stuff! Look at this!”

Philip puckered his lips as he investigated the tattered-looking hat in Daniel’s hands. “And that is?”

“I’ll show you.” Daniel slapped the hat on his head and after the resulting puff of magic cleared, Philip found himself looking at… well, himself. “Ta-da!” the false Philip said in Daniel’s voice.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Philip said, clearly impressed while Daniel took the hat off and returned to his normal self. “Anything else of note?”

“Actually, yes,” Daniel said, producing a ring to show Philip. “I think this may be of interest to you?”

Philip inspected the ring in delight. “If this is what I think it is, it could prove to be rather useful.”

Daniel cocked his head. “What is it? I thought it was just a pretty magic ring.”

Philip shook his head. “No, according to legend these are supposed to be able to summon an elemental that you can command.”

“Well, that’s going to come in handy.”

Philip nodded and tugged Daniel away from the now mostly empty bag. “Come on, there’s nothing else of note.” He and Daniel headed down the hall, Philip once again in the front. Oddly enough, there was a curtain covering the entirety of the hall and he glared at it suspiciously. “Step back.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “It’s a curtain, Philip. Not everything is trying to kill us.” He went to move it himself but Philip snarled and smacked his hand away. “Alright, alright,” he huffed, clutching his hand to his chest. “I’ll wait back here while you fight the big bad curtain.”

With a dramatic flourish, Philip tore open the curtains, but absolutely nothing happened. He sheepishly turned around to tell Daniel he was right but was met with only a blank stone wall that definitely hadn’t been there before. “Daniel?!”

“Hi, yes, hello, Daniel here!” Daniel shouted from the other side of the wall, far more concerned with his own issues at the moment. As soon as the wall had silently slotted down between him and Philip another one had appeared at the end of the hallway and the room they created was quickly flooding with water. “Uh, yeah, can you please get me out of here before I drown?”

“I’ll get you out!” Philip swore, ramming his shoulder against the wall, which didn’t even budge. He went to attack it again but was slammed into the wall. He whirled around only to see Daniel looking at him confusion on his face.

“Philip?” he asked nervously. “What was that?”

“Daniel? I thought you were on the other side of the wall?”

“I am on the other side, you stupid overgrown lizard! And if you don’t hurry up you’re going to have to deal with my drowned corpse!” came Daniel’s muffled voice.

Philip turned to the Daniel in front of him just in time to see it grin maliciously and slam into him again. “This is going to be much easier than I thought,” taunted the Daniel Philip now knew was a doppelganger. “You know, I thought beating a mighty dragon would be much harder.” Philip snarled and shot fire at it, but it dodged with a sly smirk and slammed into him again. “Oh, you’re going to have to do much better than that.”

Philip slashed his claws, managing to catch it off guard and hit it across its face. “Philip! I need to get out now!” Daniel called an edge of panic now in his tone.

Philip slammed against the wall again, still unable to make a dent. “Look for some kind of switch! Maybe there’s-” he was cut off by a grunt as the doppelganger once again slammed into him from the side. He growled and batted it away with his tail then threw himself at the wall again. “Daniel!”

Daniel took a deep breath and dove down into the water, squinting through the darkness to try and find anything that could help him escape. He emerged several times to get a quick lungful of air and check on the fight, and it didn’t sound too good on Philip’s end. Once he made it to the end and saw nothing he quickly swam back just in time to hear Philip get thrown into another wall. “There’s nothing in here!”

“Then start hacking at the wall yourself!” Philip shouted, slashing his claws into the doppelganger. He attacked the wall again but turned around in time to catch the monster and throw it off before it could hit him again.

Daniel grunted and got out the daggers he had thrown at the gnolls and started trying to chip away at the wall. He heard Philip throw himself at the wall again before the water finally rose overhead, leaving him unable to do much of anything but float and hold his breath.

“Daniel?” Philip called. When there was no response he yelled a bit louder. “Daniel!” The doppelganger took its opportunity to attack again, but Philip caught it in his unforgiving claws. Then with a loud, angry roar, he threw it at the wall separating him and Daniel, which cracked in several places before it suddenly burst temporarily flooding the hall and knocking Philip back. As the water drained away he sat up and saw two Daniel simultaneously sitting up and rubbing their heads.

One of the Daniels blinked at the other for a moment as if trying to comprehend what he was seeing before turning to Philip. “Philip, listen to me. It’s me. That guy is the fake, okay?”

The other Daniel just rolled his eyes and stabbed him with the daggers still in his hands. The first Daniel froze for a moment and looked back at the Daniel who stabbed him in shock. Then he began to twitch, flashing from Daniel to Philip then a dwarf, a gargoyle, an elf, faster and faster before it settled on the blue humanoid shape of its true form and died. “Well,” said Daniel, yanking his daggers out of the doppelganger. “I have to admit I wasn’t expecting that.”

Philip sat in shocked silence for a moment before bursting out into loud, bright laughter. “No, I can’t imagine you were,” he said, shaking his head. He stood and walked over to help Daniel to his feet. “So, how do I know you’re the real Daniel, hmm?” he teased.

Daniel arched an eyebrow and said flatly, “Maybe you don’t. Maybe I just used magic to make the real Daniel look like a doppelganger when he died. Maybe the Daniel you knew was always a doppelganger. Who knows?”

Philip snorted. “Well, the doppelganger might have had your face, but it certainly didn’t have your sharp tongue. I’m pretty sure even if you are really a doppelganger you’re the one I can trust.”

Daniel dropped his act and beamed at him. “I guess you have me pigeonholed. Now, are you going to make me wait back next time we have to do something or are you going to let me fight, too?”

Philip rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. Fight everything in this castle and die. See if I care.”

“You’d care a little bit,” Daniel smirked. “Admit it. You’d be pretty put out if I died.”

Philip glared playfully and pointed down the hall. “Go. Unlike you, I don’t want to spend the rest of our lives in this castle.”

Daniel proudly took his place at the head and went ahead. When he got to the corner he grinned, noticing that there was a good portion of the wall that had somehow collapsed, leading to the room inside. “Philip! I think we found our way out!”

“Thank Bahamut,” Philip muttered. He stomped forward but froze when he saw what was inside. He turned to Daniel with an infuriated look on his face. “There’s a troll in there! Why can’t anything go our way in this damn place?” he hissed.

Daniel swore under his breath. “Is there any way we can get past it?”

Philip peered into the room again. “I think it’s asleep right now. This is probably that thing we heard earlier when we were going through here.”

Daniel pursed his lips. “Okay, we’re going to try to sneak past it, but I’m also going to put these ball bearings on the ground around it so if we do wake it up at least we’ll have a moment while it tries to stand up.” Philip nodded and they carefully crept into the bedroom and Daniel silently emptied his bag of ball bearings so they pooled around the sleeping monster. They made it all the way to the door which opened with the loudest creak either of them had heard.

Unfortunately, this woke up the troll who jerked and immediately went to stand. Fortunately, Daniel’s careful planning paid off and it went tumbling to the ground again and again as it tried to get on its feet. “Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” Daniel shouted, pushing Philip out the door and slamming it shut behind them. With the door closed, he began piling as much stuff as possible in front of the door, finally stabbing the two daggers he’d ruined on the wall into the doorframe to block the door from opening. “Hopefully, that will keep it occupied long enough for it to get bored of trying to hunt and kill us!” he said with false cheerfulness as he quickly walked through the door.

When they were both out on the landing Daniel let out a relieved sigh at the familiar sight. Until this moment he hadn’t dared hope they would actually be getting out, but now he was sure they could make it home. “Come on, let’s get this stupid fucking mirror and get the hell out of here.”

Philip grunted in agreement and they went to the previously locked door which Dan smugly pointed his Chime of Opening at, causing it to swing open. As predicted, the room inside was grand, far nicer than any of the others they had seen. Thanks to the magical lock, nobody had managed to get inside so everything was untouched since the lord and lady died.

That included the pair of corpses lying on the bed.

“Holy fuck,” Daniel swore, covering his nose with his shirt. “How long have those been there, you reckon?”

“Who’s to say?” Philip grunted. He managed to keep his composure a little better than Daniel, but only just. “All things considered, they’ve most likely been here since they died over a hundred years ago.”

“Then why the fuck do they still smell like this? Surely they should have turned to dust by now.” Philip furrowed his brow in thought, but suddenly the corpses moved, giving Daniel his own answer. “They’re ghouls,” he groaned, drawing his sword. “I hate ghouls.”

“You were telling me on the way over here that you wanted to fight one.”

“I said I wanted to fight a ghost.”

Philip scoffed and shot flames at the shambling corpses. Fire alone apparently couldn’t stop them; before the flames even finished dying down the two monsters leapt at Daniel and Philip. Philip was taken by surprise and snarled as one of them latched its teeth onto his arm, but Daniel managed to shove the one attacking him away with his shield.

“I bet ghosts don’t smell this bad,” Daniel grouched, stabbing the one that had attacked him and kicking it away.

“You’d be surprised,” Philip said, swinging around and smacking both ghouls with his tail. One of them exploded into dust upon hitting the wall but the other one let out a shrill cry and attacked again. It managed to swipe its claws against Daniel’s arm, but he retaliated with his sword and it too exploded into dust.

Daniel sheathed his sword dusted his hands off. “You know there’s something awful behind that door, right?” he said nodding to a door that most likely led to a closet. As the mirror was nowhere to be seen in the room, the closet was the best guess for its location.

Philip snorted. “Based on our experiences so far I’m thinking there’s probably two terrible things.”

Daniel smirked, and offered him the last potion in his bag. “You want this? I’m doing all right, all things considered, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look this rough. That doppelganger really did a number on you.”

“Don’t remind me,” Philip shuddered. He took the potion and drained it and Daniel was once again bitter over the fact that potions didn’t make everyone sick. Philip definitely wasn’t completely better, but he didn’t look like a strong breeze would knock him over anymore. Daniel counted that as a win. “Alright, open it up.”

Daniel nodded, and magically unlocked the door. Inside was something a bit odd. The mirror was propped up in the back surrounded by several glowing orbs of light in a rainbow of colors. Piles of shields scattered around the mirror, but no armour or weapons anywhere. He was about to point this out to Philip when the door slammed shut, startling them both. Philip immediately tried to force it open by ramming his shoulder into it, but it didn’t budge. Daniel stepped forward and tried to use his Chime again, but all it did was produce a pretty ringing sound.

“This is bull shit,” Daniel snapped, kicking the door. He soon regretted this action and hopped around on one foot while holding the injured one in his hands.

As he was hopping around the cramped room he managed to knock into the mirror. This triggered a response and he watched in slight horror as the shields all formed together into the shape of a large humanoid. He gently tugged on his friend’s sleeve. “Uh, Philip, we have a-”

He nervous warning was interrupted as two fists made of shields swung at them. Daniel managed to yank Philip down with him as he ducked to avoid the attack so they were both unscathed. Philip started off with a fire attack, and Daniel followed up with his sword which bounced uselessly off the shield guardian’s shields. The guardian again attacked, this time managing to catch Philip in the chest. Philip snarled and bit down on the guardian’s arm and slashed with his claws.

While Philip had it distracted, Daniel snuck up behind it and stabbed it with his daggers which were once again useless. The guardian swung at them, which they rolled away from to dodge. Philip leapt on it to slash and bite, and Daniel started digging through his bag. He knew his usual weapons weren’t affecting the guardian, so he needed to fight magic with magic. He soon found what he was looking for, and with a shout he threw the tiny nightmare statue at the guardian. It bounced off harmlessly and fell to the ground. Daniel was worried for a moment that it hadn’t worked, but hellish flames erupted from the ground at the guardian’s feet. Once the flames were gone, the guardian stood still for a moment before collapsing to the ground in a pile of shields.

“This damn mirror better be worth it,” Philip snapped, marching towards it. He examined the window for a moment then nodded. “It is actually pretty nice. What do you think?”

“I dunno, there’s something about it…” Daniel trailed off into silence, eyes locked on the mirror. Visions were flashing across his eyes, visions he couldn’t understand. He saw unpulled carriages of metal that roared down streets swarmed only with humans. He saw a man on a hill and music played but there wasn’t a bard, just a strange black box. He saw the same metal carriages, only much much bigger that flew through the sky with the birds. Strangest of all, he saw human versions of himself and Philip sat nearly on top of one another as they looked into a strange rectangular portal that showed moving pictures. As he watched the Daniel and Philip on the couch smiled gentle smiles and moved their faces closer-

“Daniel!”

Daniel was snapped from his vision and looked up to see his Philip staring at him in concern. “I don’t think I like this mirror,” he slurred, then collapsed to the ground.

“Daniel!” Philip snarled, shaking the drow to try and wake him up. He swore at himself for taking the last health potion and hoisted Dan up into his arms. He ran out of the castle and as soon as he cleared the door, he transformed into his full size and carefully placed Daniel on his back in the safest way he could. He spread his wings and took to the sky, not even stopping to break down their camp. He flew all night, not stopping for rest once just furiously flapping his wings.

He made the journey in just ten hours. The sun had made its way into the sky by the sixth hour and Philip could feel the warmth prickling uncomfortably at his dark scales, but pressed on. He made it to their cave and fell into a heap, completely exhausted. He was so tired he couldn’t summon the energy to transform, so he just curled up around Daniel in his dragon form and let the exhaustion wash over him. He was safe, Daniel was safe, and nothing could happen to them so long as they were in the cave.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Phil let out a deep sigh and fell back on Dan’s bed watching the other man dart around the room grabbing as much stuff as he could hold and shoving it in his suitcase. “You really are the worst packer ever, you know that?” he yawned.

Dan paused what he was doing and narrowed his eyes at him. “You could help you know.”

Philip snorted. “Yeah, right. Every time I’ve tried to help you you act like I’ve never packed a bag before. I’m pretty sure last time you actually smacked my hand.”

Dan winced at the memory and zipped his bag shut. “Okay, well, you don’t have to just sit there and watch me. You could call the train station and see if we can get a later ticket.” “I already know we can’t,” Phil pointed out. “I deliberately got the latest ticket possible. If we miss this train we won’t be able to leave until morning.”

Dan whipped around and looked at him wild eyed. “Well, shit,” he said before rushing out the door for the bathroom.

“Try not to blind yourself this time!” Phil cheerfully called after him. He hummed to himself and puttered around the room, making sure Dan had everything. Sure enough, he picked up Dan’s phone charger and wallet and packed a couple pairs of socks. He stashed the charger and wallet in their travel and zipped the suitcase right as Dan stumbled in. “You ready now?”

Dan shoved his toiletries bag into his suitcase and whirled around. “Yes. Let’s go right fucking now.” Without waiting for a response, he shoved past Phil and out the door. By the time Phil made it outside he was already shoving his bags into the boot of a cab he had waved down. “Phil! Come on, we’re going to miss our train!”

Phil rolled his eyes fondly but complied with Dan’s need for speed. “Liverpool Street Station, please,” he ordered the cabby after Dan ushered him in.

“Traffic over there is terrible right about now,” the cabby warned. “It’s gonna take us a good thirty minutes.”

“That’s fine.”

Dan gawked at Phil. “No it’s not! Our train was supposed to leave at a quarter to five and it’s already half past!”

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” the cabby apologized. “I’ll get there as fast as I can, but I can’t make any promises.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Phil insisted. “We have more than enough time to get there.”

“Phil,” Dan hissed, “if we miss this train because of traffic I’m going to scream.”

Phil cocked an eyebrow. “Well, first off, if we missed it it’d be because someone didn’t pack.” Dan quickly broke eye contact, his ears ever so pink. Phil laced their fingers together so he could press a kiss to the back of his hand. “Luckily I know and love the person in question and our train doesn’t leave until a quarter past five.”

Dan snapped his head back around and narrowed his eyes at his grinning boyfriend. “You, Phil Lester, are a criminal mastermind.”

Phil laughed and dropped their hands. “I prefer to think I learn from my mistakes.”

“That was nearly a year ago, drop it, you ass.”

Phil hummed, pretending to think about it. “Well, we nearly missed our tour to take you to A&E because you were too lazy to pack. It’s probably best that I keep that in mind when booking from now on.”

Dan crossed his arms and pouted slightly. “That was one time.”

“What about when we went to New York and you didn’t pack socks, your laptop charger, or any money?”

“Okay, fine, I’m not good at packing. Maybe I should just let you do it from now on.”

“I offered this time.”

“Shut up!” Dan slapped his hands to his ears. “I don’t want to hear it! I don’t deserve this kind of harassment!”

“Of course not, dear,” Phil chuckled, rolling his eyes and looking back out the window. Dan stuck his tongue out at him and the driver chuckled, but the commotion died down quick enough. The ride was mostly quiet spiced with Dan leaning over to show Phil something from Tumblr while the driver asked the typical non-prying questions about their upcoming trip that Phil had to answer ass usual. As the cabby said earlier, the drive did take over a half hour, but thanks to Phil’s prior planning, they got there in plenty of time. Dan climbed out of the cab and started to unload their bags while Phil paid the driver and after weaving through the crowded station and showing their tickets to the appropriate people they were sat in the waiting area for their platform.

They were completely absorbed in their phones when there was a soft cough in front of them and as one they looked up to see a slightly nervous young woman smiling at them with a very young boy hiding behind her legs looking at Phil like he hung the moon. “Uh, hi,” she said awkwardly. “You’re Dan and Phil right? What am I saying I know it’s you two I don’t even know-”

“Yeah, it’s us,” Dan interrupted with a kind laugh, and she looked absolutely relieved to be stopped mid ramble. “I’m guessing you watch our videos?”

“Er, well, I used to?” she admitted, blushing a light pink. “I quit watching you guys about a year ago, sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, tastes change,” Phil assured her. “Do you still want a selfie or…?”

“Well, the reason I came over isn’t for actually for me,” she said smiling. She leaned down and grabbed the boy’s hand and pulling him out to stand in front of Phil. “This is my son, Todd, and he’s the biggest AmazingPhil fan I know.” She looked at Dan and winced. “Sorry, Dan, he’s not getting his hands on yours for a while yet.”

Dan snorted. “Honestly, I wouldn’t want him to.”

Phil ignored their short exchange and stood so he could crouch down to Todd’s height and smiled his brightest smile at him. “Hi, Todd, my name’s Phil. It’s nice to meet you.”

Todd’s eyes got bigger and rounder before he bashfully ducked his head and looked up through his dark curls. “Hi,” he said in a voice so quiet Phil almost didn’t hear him.

“Do you like watching my videos?”

Todd nodded furiously. “I like lions, too,” he said, grabbing the pull in his hoodie and began chewing it.

“I bet Lion wishes he could hear that,” he chuckled. He pointed at Dan who was watching their interaction closely. “Do you know who that is?”

Todd nodded again. “That’s Dan.”

“Yeah, Dan’s my best friend. Who’s your best friend?”

“You.”

Dan made a strangled noise, but Phil managed to hide his reaction to the adorable answer a little better. “Well, you’re one of my best friends, too, then.”

Todd’s jaw dropped, the string dropped from his mouth to wetly hang where it belonged. He looked up at his mother who just laughed and nudged him forward. “Can I have a hug?” he asked tentatively like he really thought he could possibly be rejected.

Phil laughed and after glancing up to get an okay from his mother he said “You absolutely can!” He opened his arms as wide as they could go and after Todd flung himself in them he was wrapped up in the best hug of his life.

“I love you, Phil,” Todd said softly and Phil’s heart melted and he hugged just a bit tighter.  When Todd finally pulled away he beamed at Phil like he had single handedly saved Christmas.

After clearing his throat of the lump lodged inside it, Phil asked, “Do you think we could take a picture for your mom?” He had noticed her taking pictures almost the whole exchange and she smiled and mouthed he thanks.

Todd nodded, and after a moment of scrutinizing Dan said, “Should we ask Dan, too?”

Phil chuckled. “Whatever you want, buddy. It’s all up to you.”

Todd thought it over for another moment before finally deciding, “Dan can come.”

Dan bowed grandly, “Thank you very much.” A moment later he and Phil were knelt on either side of Todd who had his arms around Phil’s neck like a grinning kohala.

“Thanks so much, you two, you have no idea how much this means to him,” the mother gushed. “I honestly picked the best guys ever to stan as a teenager. Almost jealous I didn’t get to meet you when I was a super fan.”

“We love meeting people who watch our videos,” Dan said. “People of all ages. Also, I don’t think I caught your name?”

“OH!” She blushed, and stuck out her hand. “Sorry, how rude of me; my wife is much better at this kind of thing. My name is Viviana.”

“Well, the two of you have a great kid,” Phil said, standing and shaking the hand.

“We’re lucky to have him,” she smiled down at him. “Speaking of my wife: Todd, honey, we have to go, mummy’s waiting on us. Say bye bye.”

Todd got in one last hug around Phil’s knees before taking his mother’s hand as they walked away. With the other he was waving at them and giggling. “Bye bye, Dan! Bye bye, Phil!”

“Bye bye, Todd,” Dan and Phil said in unison, waving until they saw Todd and Viviana go sit with another woman and Todd climbed into her lap and began to animatedly talk to her.

“Can we have like twelve kids?” Dan sighed dreamily, watching the family.

Phil laughed. “Well, let’s see how well we can take care of a Sim baby and maybe we’ll talk about getting a real one. Maybe not twelve, though.”

Dan rolled his eyes, and gently shoved him. “You know what I mean.”

Phil smiled and laced his fingers around Dan’s left hand and brought it up to kiss the ring finger on it. “Maybe we’ll get some kind of decoration here first.”

Dan breathing hitched for a half second before he was back to his usual teasing demeanor. “Well, you better hurry up, old man. Neither of us are getting any younger.”

“No, I guess we’re not,” Phil said, thinking about the little black box hidden away in his props chest. “We’re really not.”

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Hever Castle was beautiful, and anyone who got the chance to go should really take it, Dan would never begrudge them that. However, it was rather difficult to get to, even when you knew where you were going and what you were doing. When Phil is driving a rental car in the typical South England downpour it was apparently impossible.

“Dan, face it we’re lost,” Phil whined like the quitter he was. “Let me pull over and ask for directions.”

“We have directions!” Dan protested, waving the printed out directions from the website. You must be doing something wrong.”

Phil sputtered indignantly. “I’m doing exactly what you tell me to! Maybe you’re doing something wrong.”

Dan pursed his lips, refusing to admit there might even be a flicker of truth to the very thing he’d been thinking for the past ten minutes. “I’m literally reading off a sheet of paper. Unless you’re trying to imply I can’t read, I doubt it’s me.”

Phil groaned and dragged his hand down his face. “You know I’m not. Maybe we’re just both really bad at directions. Come on, just let me pull over real quick.”

“Give me five more minutes?” Dan wheedled. “Please? I promise if things are just worse that we can just ask for directions.”

Phil narrowed his eyes. “Why is this so important to you anyways? You wouldn’t even let me use my phone.”

Dan shrugged. “I dunno. My mum and dad always used to navigate for each other using real maps, and I definitely can’t read a map that well so this was the logical second. It just seems really grown up to me, I can’t describe it.”

Phil sighed. “Well, asked and answered, I guess. We’ll go another ten minutes and then ask for help.”

Dan leaned over the console and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re the best.”

“Yeah, and don’t you forget it.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just drive, okay? We’re looking for a road called Hever Road.”

“Dan, we turned onto Hever Road already.”

“Shit. Well, now all I’ve got is ‘turn left, turn right.’ I’m in hell.”

Phil laughed fondly. “Well, in that case I guess-”

“Holy shit, I think that’s it!” Dan interrupted, gesturing wildly out the windshield. Sure enough, the rain was slacking off just enough so that they could see through the trees and there was Hever Castle and Gardens looming in the distance. “Fuck, I thought we’d never get here!”

Following the road before them, they drove up to the castle, excitement growing steadily. “I’ve never stayed in a castle before,” Phil admitted. “I mean, yeah, I’ve visited them, but I never spent the night.”

“I have,” Dan said. “Mum and dad send me and Adrien on a bunch of little community field trips to get us out of the house during the summer. Adrien had loads of fun but I was at that age where I obstinately made everything I didn’t want to do torture so I thought it was awful.”

“You mean like your age now?”

Dan narrowed his eyes playfully. “Yeah, well, I was going to let you tweet about us staying at a castle, but now I’m going to.”

Phil sputtered indignantly. “That’s hardly fair!”

“Too bad! I’m already typing it out!”

“Ugh, you’re the worst.”

“You know, you say that all the time and I don’t think you know what it means.”

“It means I secretly hate you and as soon as Janet from the shops is ready I’m running away with her.”

“Won’t change the fact that I got to tweet about a castle first.”

Phil looked like he would have normally kept their banter going, but he was too busy pulling up to the valet and rolling down the window. “Hi, we’re here under a reservation for Lester? Also, this is a rental car and they said we could just leave it with you and they’d just charge my card?”

“Yes, sir,” the valet said, opening the door so they could get out. “We have staff who return rental cars for our guests.”

“Great! Well, I’ll just, uh,” Phil trailed off as a bellhop apparated at the boot and started unloading their luggage onto a luggage cart. He moved to help, but the bellhop was so efficient any assistance was thoroughly unneeded.

“Here’s the keys,” Dan said, mercifully stepping in and taking the keys from Phil’s hand. “We just need to check in at the front desk correct?”

The valet nodded. “Yes, and when you know what room you are, just tell Jay here and he’ll deliver your luggage.”

“Thanks!” Dan beamed, and steered Phil towards the main lobby. This seemed to snap Phil out of his stupor and he quickly informed the front desk of their situation and found out what room they were in and told Jay who led them right to it. The room was spacious and had furniture in it that was probably older than Dan, but the only thing he was interested in was the big cushy bed which he fell back on immediately.

“Dan, there’s a clawfoot tub in here!” Phil called from the bathroom excitedly.

“That’s cool as fuck,” Dan murmured, doing his best to melt into the luxurious duvet.

Phil wandered out of the bathroom after giving it his customary inspection and crawled in the bed next to Dan. “Come on, don’t give in yet. We’re supposed to be meeting Martyn and Cornelia for dinner, remember?”

“Can’t we just skip?” Dan whined. “We’re going to be spending the weekend with them, I doubt they’ll miss us for one meal. Tell them we’re too busy fucking in a fancy hotel room to go to dinner.”

Phil barked out a laugh and pressed a kiss to Dan’s curly hair. “I don’t think that will work. I’m pretty sure we’re going over a schedule so we don’t have to spend the weekend in each other’s pockets.”

Dan flopped over and grumbled into his folded arms for a bit before sighing and sitting up. “Alright, then. Let’s go to dinner with the in-laws.”

Phil’s eyes flashed deviously and a sly grin worked its way across his mouth. “Well, we don’t have to be there for a couple more hours. Cornelia insisted we get a chance to settle into our room.” “Thank god,” Dan sighed, collapsing back down on the bed. “Let me sleep here until I die here.”

“You know, the bathroom here is really cool,” Phil said conversationally.

“Oh, yeah? Great.”

“Yeah, it’s got probably the biggest shower I’ve ever seen in person. It’s like they made it for two people.”

Dan froze as Phil pressed a quick kiss to the nape of his neck. “Anyway,” he continued brightly. “I’m going to go take a shower, you just lay here.”

Dan laid in the bed, still frozen, for a moment and watched Phil practically sashay into the bathroom before scrambling to his feet and following him.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Dan was a great boyfriend, and Phil loved him more than words could say. He was clever and kind, loud and loving, brilliant and beautiful. He enriched Phil’s life and improved it in ways neither of them would probably ever fully understand. Phil adored him and wouldn’t give him up for the world.

That being said, he was shit at wake up calls.

“Come on, Phillip,” he sang, making sure to pop the “p” right in Phil’s ear. He was currently bouncing up and down on his knees on the bed right by Phil’s side, and had started his routine by re-creating a video to the Numa Numa Song.

And some people thought romance was dead.

“Please,” Phil whined, shoving his face under his pillow. Maybe if he pressed down hard enough he’d pass out and Dan would quit trying to get him out of bed. “Please just let me sleep I beg.”

Dan had the audacity to snort and even though Phil couldn’t see him he knew Dan had just rolled his eyes. “You wish. They serve breakfast in the gardens and if you think I’m going to miss out on posting the most aesthetic instagrams of eggs benedict ever then you’re dead wrong. Louise is in Venice and we have a bet on who can post the best pictures this weekend.”

“Can’t you just go by yourself?”

Dan snorts, and Phil takes a hot second to be a bit offended before Dan dug his knees into Phil’s side, quite effectively forcing him out of bed. When he was on his feet he turned and scowled at Dan who just beamed up at him. “Oh, good, you’re out of bed,” he had the audacity to chirp. “There’s a breakfast being served in the garden if you’re interested.”

Phil huffed, but he was already awake and out of bed, so there was no real point in denying it any more. “Sure, Dan. That sounds great. Let me get dressed and we can head down,” he yawned, making his way to the bathroom to get ready for the day.

“Don’t forget, I’m posting pictures, and you’re going to be in them,” Dan called after him. “Wear that bird shirt you got for the BONCAS.”

“I don’t think I packed that. Did I?”

“You didn’t,” he conceded, “but I put it in there when you weren’t looking.”

Phil stuck his head out of the bathroom and looked rather unimpressed and rumpled. “So, you’re telling me that you didn’t have enough time to pack your own suitcase, but you had enough time to make sure I had the specific shirt you wanted for your aesthetic breakfast photoshoot?”

“Every man has his priorities, Phil.” Dan grinned when he heard a soft “You’re impossible” that he probably wasn’t supposed to hear. “Hey, make sure you wear your glasses. Everyone thinks you look amazing in them and it will also help the ‘relaxed but posh’ vibe I’m going for.”

Phil shook his head and chuckled but did as he was ordered, and stepped out of the bathroom freshened up and bespectacled. He stepped in between Dan’s knees to press a kiss to his forehead, to which Dan responded with a soft, happy hum. “You know, we’re spending the weekend at a bed and breakfast in a castle. I don’t think you can get any more aesthetic than that.”

“Louise is in Venice,” Dan reminded him. “It doesn’t matter where we are, I’m going to have stiff competition.”

“I offered to take you to Venice before.” Phil would absolutely refuse to admit he was pouting, even under oath.

Dan rested his arms over Phil’s shoulders and beamed. “Yeah, and I still stand by my decision to stay at home.”

“What’s the point of having all this money if you won’t even let me spend it on you?”

“Aw, do you want to be my sugar daddy, Phil? I didn’t know you were into that.”

Phil sputtered, embarrassed, while Dan giggled at him. “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he whined.

"Yeah, but you’re fun to rile up,” Dan agreed, pecking him on the nose. “Now, get dressed. We’re going to be late.”

Phil hummed and did as he was told and before long he and Dan were headed down to the grounds hand in hand. “It really is a beautiful morning,” Phil said, breathing in the sweet summer air. He knew it would get hot later, but it was still early enough that the dew was clinging to the grass and the cool of night was still lingering.

Dan closed his eyes and lifted his face towards the soft periwinkle sky. “Yeah, it really is.”

Phil tore his eyes away from the scenery to stare at the man stood next to him. He had known Daniel Howell for eight years and he still managed to steal his breath on a regular basis. He thought again (it had been happening with almost concerning frequency as of late) of the small, black box hidden away in their flat in London. “Come on, we’re going to be late if we don’t hurry.”

Dan hummed happily and took another moment to soak in the morning sun. “Yeah, alright. Let’s go.”

The garden was almost magical in the soft morning light. Each place setting was decorated with flowers picked fresh from the bushes that enclosed the few little tables around. There were already people at all of the tables, but Dan made eye contact with one lady who was sitting alone, and she smiled and waved them over. Dan tugged Phil behind him as he gave the woman a second glance over. Her most distinctive feature was her long, dark purple hair that seemed to sparkle with its own light, and the matching stars she had painted on each of her cheeks. She looked younger than Dan but something in her eyes glinted with something Dan couldn’t quite name. “Won’t you two please sit?” she asked politely, gesturing to the chairs on the other side of the little round table.

“Are you waiting for anyone?” Dan asked as he and Phil sat.

“Me? Oh, no, I’m here alone,” she said. “I actually work here, but sometimes I like to partake in some of the activities we have around here.”

“What is it you do?” Phil asked.

“I run the tourist department; you know, the website and social media for the castle.”

Phil perked up at that. “Then you were probably the one who talked to my brother! He said he worked on your website recently. Martyn Lester?”

The woman brightened and smiled. “Yes, I did speak with him. That means the two of you must be Dan and Phil.” When the two men exchanged confused glances she laughed softly. “Martyn spoke very highly of the both of you, and told me you were going to be his plus two. Forgive my rudeness, my name is Estella Farfalla, but most people just call me Stella.”

“Well, it’s a pleasure meeting you, Stella.”

“And you two as well.”

The conversation was briefly interrupted by a waiter asking for their drink orders followed shortly by him coming back to serve their breakfast. Phil went to dig in, but Dan gently smacked his elbow to remind him of the pictures he was meant to take. Stella watched in amusement as they took turns photographing each other and their food and the scenery until Dan was satisfied that he would be able to find and post a picture that would knock Louise’s socks off.

“So, you said you work here,” Phil said while Dan agonized over what filter to use. “Do you have any recommendations? We want to get the full experience.”

“Well, as luck would have it I actually started as a tour guide here so I know pretty much everything about this place.” She drummed her fingers on her chin as she looked them over. “I’m guessing you two haven’t gone on the tour yet. Correct?”

“Not yet,” Dan admitted. “We only just got in last night, and we went to dinner then straight to bed.”

She nodded. “Well, the tour is all inside so wait until this afternoon, since it will be raining then.” Dan frowned. “The weather report said it was supposed to be clear all weekend.”

She shot him a mischievous grin. “Maybe I know something the weatherman doesn’t.”

“What are you psychic or something?”

She winked and tapped the side of her nose, and Phil looked about like he was going to burst with delight. “Are you, really?” he demanded. “What is it you do, exactly? Tarot or tea reading? I’ve dabbled in that before, but I doubt I’m actually any good at it.”

“You never know. I think there’s a lot of untapped potential, Phil.” She turned to Dan who looked markedly less impressed. “And what about you? Any interest in the preternatural?”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, last time I had anything to do with fortune telling I had a banana shoved down the back of my neck, so no thanks.”

Stella looked amused, like he had said exactly what she had known he’d say. “You know, I had a feeling you’d feel that way.” Dan rose an incredulous eyebrow so she finally answered Phil’s question. “I do astrology. I decided to lean fully into the whole star theme, you see?”

Phil chuckled. “So, do you check the stars for the weather every day or was this a coincidence?”

“Not normally, no. I just knew something important was meant to happen this weekend, so I decided to check last night.”

“Any hints on what the big deal this weekend is?”

“Oh, I really shouldn’t,” she said with a coy smile. “I find that most people start meddling where they shouldn’t when they learn too much.”

“I guess I’ll just have to wait, then. I hope I don’t miss it.”

“Oh, I doubt that will be possible.”

Phil was about to ask what exactly she meant by that, but was interrupted by their waiter coming back. He whisked away their plates and glasses only to replace them with a couple serving plates of cakes and other post breakfast sweets. Dan was delighted and immediately proceeded to take just as many pictures of this food as he did the previous course. When Phil looked up after the final picture was taken, he saw Stella’s empty chair, looking like it had never been occupied. “She was nice,” he said to Dan. “A little odd, but still really nice.”

“You only thought she was nice because you were hoping she’d read your palm,” Dan teased. “Besides, she was obviously a fake. I mean, come on. Rain? Today? This is the most sun I’ve seen in years.”

At that exact moment a fat raindrop fell directly on the end of Dan’s nose, causing him to cross his eyes to get a good look at it. Phil snickered into his hand while Dan wiped his nose with slightly pink cheeks.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Dan glared out the window of their room in abject horror. He was beyond angry. He had checked no less than four different weather updates and they all called for the exact same thing. Hot, but not unbearably so, and sunny. With the A/C in the castle this weekend should have been absolutely perfect. But no. Right now it was pouring rain so hard he could see about ten metres before it was too dark. He checked the weather again. Sure enough, there was still a happy little sun falsely claiming that it was partly cloudy.

“Seriously, what the fuck?” he growled, turning to Phil who was sat cross-legged on their bed towel drying his hair after they were caught outside.

Phil shrugged. “You know how the weather here is. I would personally find a weekend of perfect weather more unbelievable than a surprise storm.”

“It’s not even storming,” Dan groused. “There hasn’t been any thunder or anything, it’s just a fuckload of rain.”

Phil grinned and lassoed Dan with his towel and pulled him closer. He started gently scrubbing at Dan’s sopping curls, ignoring the weak protests. “You’re just mad because what’s-her-name was right.”

“Her name was Stella and I still think she was a phoney. People aren’t actually psychic, babe.”

“Tell that to the rain.”

“Lucky guess. Like you said, it’s always raining here.”

Phil uncovered Dan’s face and placed a kiss on his scowling brow. “Psychic or no, it is raining and I think a tour would be a lot of fun. Change your clothes and we can go look around. We can kill a couple hours and maybe by then the rain will clear and we’ll get to go do the maze.”

Dan was still very clearly pouting, but did as he was told and started rummaging in his case to find new clothes while Phil did the same. When they were both dressed, Dan grinned and offered an arm to Phil, who rolled his eyes fondly but took it nevertheless. They went downstairs, only to see a rather familiar face at the foot of the stairs.

“Martyn!” Phil said happily, letting go of Dan to clasp his brother’s hand. “You and Cornelia about to do the tour?”

“Yeah. Bummer about this rain, though. We were about to go try our hand at archery.” He shrugged. “We were lucky enough to still be inside when it started pouring. Crazy weather, eh?”

“Yeah, me and Dan were still in the gardens when it started.”

“Well, you two want to join me and Corny? Come on, there’s someone I want to introduce you to.” Martyn led them to the front desk where purple eyes regarded them with thinly veiled amusement. “Guys, this is Estella Farfalla. She’s the person I worked with, and she’s the one who got us access this weekend.”

“I’m pleased to say we’ve already made our acquaintance,” Stella said brightly, handing over the guided tours. “We met at breakfast in the gardens this morning.”

“You’re telling me these two woke up for breakfast?” Cornelia mock gasped.

Dan gave her a mildly dirty look while Stella just laughed. “Yes, we had a lovely time. Are you two about to do the tour as well?”

“Yeah, the four of us are going to give the place a walk around,” Martyn said. “Well, I guess if you three have already met , there’s no point in delaying. Come on, you two.”

“Oh, there is one more thing!” Stella said urgently. “The tour has you going into King Henry’s room about halfway through, but I recommend waiting until the very end. That room is always my favourite.”

“Thanks for the tip!” Martyn beamed. “Well, see you around!”

“Good bye! Enjoy your tour!”

Together they left the front desk and started their tour. As usual, there was a room full of paintings from the Tudor era, along with some sculptures and furniture. Fuck man, idk how to appreciate art. Last time I was in a museum I liked this one exhibit because they all looked like TOS Star Trek props. My favourite piece of art is a pair of wings made out of spoons. Fuck. I could really really use your help here.

What Dan found far more interesting was the room full of miniature towns and houses. They were all in their little display cases and he rather enjoyed peering down on them in their little homes living their little lives. Or, well they weren’t living their lives, but they sure looked like they could as soon as his back was turned. Suddenly, his phone let out a chirp, informing him that someone had tweeted. Without thinking, he pulled it out and swiped to see the Tweet. It was from Phil, and it was a picture of him Phil had taken without asking of him looking at the miniature buildings.

@AmazingPhil: Sorry guys. This is how tall Dan really is. We just use editing tricks to make him look like a normal human. Real-not-a-model-town for scale

Dan cut his eyes at Phil who was grinning like he thought he’d told the best joke of the century. “When are you going to stop taking secret creeper pictures of me?”

“When you stop being the most beautiful thing in the room,” Phil said smoothly, but Dan just rolled his eyes. “Besides, you posted pictures at breakfast, I needed to post something.”

Dan hummed. “Yeah, guess you’re right. Come on, I think we were abandoned.”

They walked hand in hand past the room set up to look like King Edward’s bedchambers for about the third time, as Stella had recommended, and into the drawing room where Cornelia and Martyn were. Cornelia came up to them with a cheerful bounce to her step. “Looks like the rain cleared up. Would you two be interested in coming with us to the lake?”

“Nah, I think we’ll finish up the tour,” Dan said. “Besides, it’s kind of late, so we’re probably going to head up to the room afterwards.”

“Suit yourself,” Cornelia said with a shrug. “This isn’t really my thing, but the lake is supposed to be beautiful. If we run into each other I’ll tell you if it’s worth the walk. See you!” With a jaunty wave, she and Martyn left, and Dan turned back to Phil, who was investigating a painting. Dan was fairly sure it was a dog, but it was a little too… abstract for him to say with any confidence, so he stayed silent.

“So, what do you think it is?” Well, he had planned on staying silent.

Dan pondered the question and the painting as he stepped up next to Phil. “I, um, I think it’s a dog?”

“That’s what I was thinking, but it could very easily be an alien in a fursuit if you ask me. We should buy a print and put it in the lounge.”

“Why stop at the lounge? Let’s put one in every room.”

“Wallpaper the flat with it.”

“Cover the furniture with specially made fabric with it printed on it.”

Phil chuckled lowly and gently bumped their shoulders together. “You win. Come on, I think this dog-alien wants me to have its babies.”

“You’re so fucking weird.”

“You love it.”

Finally, after wandering the halls for over two hours, they allowed themselves to go into King Henry’s room.

Only to be disappointed.

Phil frowned as he looked around. Sure, it was all very pretty and incredibly well taken care of, but the rest of the rooms had done that as well, some even better. Phil personally would have made the tour end in the room with the costumed figures all about Anne Boleyn. Sure the not-mannequins were kind of creepy and always looked like they were staring at him, but at least they were interesting. And since it was Anne Boleyn’s house it kind of made sense for her room to be the main attraction, right? This room, just had nothing special. It had the bed and the curtains and art, but other than a grand floor to ceiling mirror against the wall, there was nothing remarkable about it at all.

“Am I the only one feeling cheated?” Dan asked on a whisper. “I was expecting a bit more, to be honest.”

“Me, too. I mean, I get that it’s her favourite, but I don’t see why. This is just a really fancy bedroom.”

Dan snorted. “Let’s at least get a look at this mirror, yeah?” Without waiting for a response, Dan walked over to stand in front of it. His reflection was vaguely distorted, but he couldn’t exactly put his finger on how. It didn’t make him wider or taller or darker or lighter or rippled in any way, he just looked wrong. “Phil, you have to come look at this.”

“I am.”

Dan looked next to his reflection, and sure enough, Phil was there. He was also distorted, but Dan could clearly see that he was paler with a weird green tinge. “It makes your reflection look weird. I don’t know how or why but- holy shit, Phil, are you okay?” The mirror hadn’t actually changed his reflection much at all, Phil just looked incredibly ill. “What happened?”

“I don’t- I don’t know,” Phil said, shuddering. “I just walked over here and suddenly-” He cut himself off with a groan, clutching his head. “Let’s- Can we just go to the room?”

“Yeah, of course,” Dan said softly. He wrapped his arm around Phil’s waist like he would break in half at the slightest pressure and led him back up to their room. When Phil was laid down, Dan went about closing all the curtains and getting a cold rag from the bathroom. He quietly pulled a chair up next to the bed and started petting Phil’s head and wiping away sweat. “Feel any better?” he asked softly.

Phil gave a full-body shudder and curled deeper in the blanket, but when he smiled up at Dan it was as warm and bright as it always was. “I’ll survive, I think,” he joked. “You don’t have to stay in here with me, you know. You could go hang out with Martyn and Cornelia by the lake.”

“What and get third-wheeled so hard I fly into the sun?” Dan snorted. His smile softened as he looked down at Phil who was blinking slower and slower. “I’ll stay right here, if you don’t mind.”

Phil chuckled weakly, and opened his arms. “You know I don’t. I’d mind even less if you got in bed, too.” Dan grinned and crawled into the space made for him and wrapped his arms around Phil in return. He pressed their foreheads together and they just laid there, sharing air for a while before Phil said, “Sorry I ruined your afternoon.”

Dan pulled back just enough to raise his eyebrows and give him a Look™ which caused Phil to giggle. “That’s such a ridiculous thing for you to say that I’m not even going to dignify it with a response.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Phil yawned, pulling them closer together. “Sleep now.”

“We’re going to hate ourselves in the morning if we don’t change out of these skinny jeans,” Dan grinned.

“I’ll hate you right now if you get out of this bed.”

Dan’s smile widened so much he feared his cheeks would split. “Alright, but you have to take full responsibility for any and all misery in the morning, got it?”

They slept through the night, Dan remarkably more soundly. All through the night Phil was tossing and turning

“Still not feeling good?” Dan asked the next morning, biting his lip and running his fingers through Phil’s fringe. Phil just groaned quietly and pulled the duvet over his head. “Alright, that’s it, we’re going home.”

“That’s silly, Dan,” Phil protested. “I’m sure it will go away in a couple hours or so.”

“Yeah, sorry, no. You were struck with a weird, sudden illness for no known reason and you didn’t sleep it off. We’re going home and you’re going to the doctor tomorrow. I’m calling Martyn now.”

Phil sighed, but knew that arguing at this point in Dan’s decision making process would just make both of them frustrated. “Fine, we can go home, but I’m not going to the doctor unless this lasts through tomorrow.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Sure, fine. I don’t want a boyfriend anyway, so just let yourself die of some random disease. See if I care. Hey, Martyn, listen-”

Phil groaned and rolled out of bed, ignoring Dan’s sharp glare. Fortunately, Dan had packed away most of their stuff at some point, so Phil just kind of puttered around gathering their smaller stuff while Dan made phone calls. Dan was over reacting, as per usual. Even just this little bit of getting up and moving was making him feel so much better. He was practically at one hundred percent. Oh, or maybe he wasn’t. He slowly straightened from where he had bent in half to pick up a sock, clutching his head. Okay, so maybe not one hundred percent, but it was definitely better than last night.

“Okay, everything is set up,” Dan said, clapping his hands. “The car will be here in about a half hour and our train tickets have been changed. Do you want me to go downstairs and see if I can find us some food?”

“Yeah, that sounds good. Want me to come with you?”

Dan pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Nah, I’m good. I’ll be back up in a bit.” And with that he was gone.

Phil groaned and flopped back on the bed, closing his eyes. Staring at the back of his eyelids, Phil started thinking about his dream from last night. Usually, it was just the feeling of flying and some blurry pictures, but last night it was different. It had the flying, but it also had a very strong feeling of claustrophobia and for some reason all his muscles hurt. Also, everything was pitch black, and he couldn’t even make out vague shapes, which didn’t help the claustrophobia. However, the most worrisome part was Dan. Usually, Dan’s presence in the dream was just a soft, fond constant, but last night some part of his brain was convinced Dan was either dead or dying.

Just then, Dan waltzed back in, carrying two plates of various breakfast pastries, and Phil dropped all thoughts on his dream in favor of grabbing a muffin. Maybe he’d ask Dan about it when they got home

Part Two