#tried fitting it on the shelf but it was too big and blocked most of everything else displayed

[sorry-mom-ive-sinned]

Updated OHSHC displays!!! (Aka I bought a Cinderella doll carriage for my Kaoru plush)

[outlustings]

Hi, can I request some Eddie Gluskin headcanons with a small s/o please?

(tall gentle man mmmmmmmmmmm)

Eddie likes to sew and because he has nearly all of the vocational block to himself, he’ll spend most of his day making you new clothes. Just because he can. Because every article of clothing in the asylum most likely has sleeves that are too long for you, he will make it his personal mission to make you clothes that don’t get in the way and actually fit you better. It also gives him an excuse to ask you to strip: “Darling, why don’t you try this on – I know it’s not complete, but I need to know how it fits!”

Might just spontaneously pick you up and hold you tight against his chest and swing you around to the tunes on the radio, your feet off the ground as the two of you “dance” – mostly it’s just Eddie dancing with you in his arms but hey, you don’t need to worry about your footwork or stepping on his toes.

If he’s in a mood, he will place his chin gently on the top of your head, bending down slightly, close his eyes and hum to himself quietly. Just put your hands on his shoulders and rock with him gently to the rhythm.

Lots of forehead kisses.  

Spooning! Falling asleep in each other’s arms while you’re curled up and cosy by his side. Eddie’s little heart melts whenever you fall asleep with your head on his chest.

Eddie is absolutely mesmerized by your small hands whenever they’re near his large ones. Just constant handholding that turns into him comparing how large his hands are and how they make yours seem so tiny. Your hands are softer, more delicate, whereas his are rougher, more weathered. He adores your hands.

He’s a little absentminded sometimes and puts most of your combined possessions on the top shelf, because that’s normal height for him! He tries his best and makes it up by being the best human ladder in the world, lifting you up to get your stuff. Gives him an excuse to sweet talk and grab your waist as an apology. No stools or ladders in this house when you have someone as tall as Eddie.

Comparing shoe sizes is somehow super funny to him. “How are they that small?” A great, big doofus, this guy.

He worries about hurting you. He doesn’t really mean to, it’s just that he has a powerful grip and sometimes he forgets how rough he can be. He just gets caught up in the moment, whether positive or negative and might yank you too hard to his direction, meaning to only take your hand. When he's pissed off, he gets rough. He, of course, apologises profusely afterwards, he doesn’t want to hurt his precious little darling like that.

[natasha-romanoff-deserved-better]

The Day The Music Died

Summary:

“This’ll be the day that I die,” Yelena had sung those exact words in the car that day, and no lies were told.

Natasha never wanted to hear that song again.

Word Count: 3437

Also on Ao3 here

~~~

Natasha stares at the bandages wrapped tightly around Clint’s left wrist, eyes locked in on the red spots where extra blood had been soaked up by the gauze. Clint’s tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, softly drumming along to the song playing from the radio as he maneuvers the car around a bend in the old back road.

“I can feel you staring.” He says, snapping Natasha out of her trance. Clint takes his eyes off the road for a second to catch her gaze. “Nat, I’m fine. I promise.” It’s not going to change what happened, but he still tries. These types of missions were always hard on Natasha, and it’d only been made that much worse when one of the target’s bodyguards had managed to catch Clint’s forearm with a knife, dangerously close to critical veins. There had been a lot of blood and although Nat was easily able to stitch his skin back together, the close call had scared her - even if she refused to admit it out loud.

“I know you’re fine, idiot. It’s impossible to get rid of you.” She snorts and sends him a small smile. The radio cuts into a commercial, advertising their station and morning talk show before launching into another song.

A long, long time ago

I can still remember how that music

Used to make me smile

Natasha frowns at the song as an alarm bell begins to blare in the back of her head at the notes that drift out of the speakers. She furrows her eyebrows at it, a sinking feeling coming over her. Images from another time threaten to overtake her, and she’s too weak to stop them.

And I knew if I had my chance

That I could make those people dance

And maybe they'd be happy for a while

A blonde little girl, only five years old, prances around the front yard. She’s barefoot and wearing her pink sparkly sundress, hair pulled up into pigtails as she tries to catch a ladybug. Natasha watches from her perch among the tree branches. Mom Melina is kneeled on the ground as she works on the garden in front of the house, planting new flowers to replace the dead ones. She’s brought her portable stereo out, sitting it on the porch and playing at full volume. Natasha isn’t even aware of what song is playing until Yelena is running up to the porch, begging her to play it again. Mom Melina does. And then plays it again with an amused smile and quirked eyebrow when Yelena asks for a third time. Yelena cheers with joy as it starts again and rises to her tip toes as she begins to twirl and dance to the music.

Nobody knows what it is about the song that Yelena likes so much, but she loves it. She constantly asks for it, so much so that Melina loads it onto a cassette tape and keeps it in the car just for her. Natasha doesn’t quite understand what most of the lyrics are talking about, but she decides she doesn’t mind the song for Yelena. In a way, it fits- Yelena is the picture perfect little all american girl, apple pie personified.

Natasha’s frozen in her seat. She pleads with herself to move, to turn off the radio. She doesn’t want to hear this. She knows what verses are coming next, and her breathing catches in her throat as they start. These words hold no comfort for her anymore.

Bye Bye Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry

And them good ol boys were drinking whiskey and rye

Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die

This’ll be the day that I die

Her sister’s high-pitched voice singing the words, a beat behind as she moves her hands cheerfully, lost in the rhythm of the song. She’s buzzing with excitement- ready for her promised big adventure, too young and oblivious to notice their parent’s anxiety or her sister’s internal crisis happening in the seat next to her. Natasha can’t look at her sister, she doesn’t want her to see the panic she knows is written over her face. Instead, she keeps her eyes locked out the window, trying desperately to commit everything to memory. The red, white, and blue lights that light up the night, the football game where a band plays and people cheer, the abundance of restaurants where families are sat enjoying dinner. The normalness of it all makes her angry - how can all these people be so casual when her world is falling apart at the seams? Yelena begins to sing the verse about dying, and it takes everything within Natasha to not snap at her. She can’t bear to listen to her little sister singing about dying, so blissfully unaware of the possibility of the verse becoming true at any moment now. Natasha should say something to her, tell her to stop, tell her what was happening. But the lure of pretending one last time is too great for her to give away. She doesn’t say anything.

Did you write the book of love

A photo album, thick with pictures of them all sit on the shelf. It’s Natasha’s favorite thing in the house, and she often sneaks out of bed to stare at the photos. Realistically, she knows they’re all fake. But if she tries hard enough, thinks long enough, she swears she can recall the events. Thanksgiving had been fun; the food had been the best she’d ever tasted. Their summer vacation had been at the beach, and she swears she can feel the sun warming her face and the sand between her toes.

And do you have faith in God above

If the bible tells you so?

She and Clint had gone to a church once, as part of an undercover mission. She’d ended up having to walk out in the middle of the service. It had been too much. She could never believe in it, even if she wanted to. No loving God would ever create the horrors she had seen before her 13th birthday or give her a family purely to steal it all away so violently.

Can music save your mortal soul

And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

Natasha’s feet hit the ground, still en pointe, as she lands the perfect Grand Jete. She tosses her arms out in the landing pose and holds it for a second before excited clapping breaks her concentration. Yelena sits there, smiling wide as possible, clad in her own black leotard and pink tights. She’s in the younger classes, not as advanced as Natasha yet, but it doesn’t stop her from trying. Yelena scrambles to her feet, crossing the floor to stand next to her sister.

“Teach me, teach me!”

It’s a complicated step, and Natasha knows she’s not ready for it just yet. She doesn’t want her to get hurt.

“I’ll teach you when you’re older, okay?” Yelena nods, and turns to the mirror, copying Natasha’s arm positions.

Natasha tries to force another breath into her lungs, but it’s harder now, her throat and chest constricted. She squeezes her eyes closed, trying to block out the flashbacks that continue to assault her.

Now for ten years we’ve been on our own

And moss grows fat on a rolling stone

But that’s not how it used to be.

Fifteen years. It had been fifteen goddamn years since Natasha had seen her sister for the last time. She refuses to let herself think of what might have happened to her. It pains her to think of her baby sister, who had once been so full of life, in such a horrid place.

Natasha wraps her arms around herself, arms holding each other tightly. She digs her fingernails into her skin, attempting to give herself something else to focus on and ground her. It doesn’t work.

Bye Bye Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the Levee but the Levee was dry

Them good ol boys were drinking whiskey and rye

And signing this will be the day that I die

This’ll be the day that I die

Natasha doesn’t know how long they’ve been stuffed into this shipping container, crowded against a hundred other little girls. They’re all dirty, all starving, all terrified. The scent of sweat and urine threatens to suffocate them, the air hot and heavy.

She has tugged Yelena into her lap, arms protectively crossed over her torso to hold her close- hasn’t let go of her since the second they were put into here for fear of losing her amongst the other girls. She’s so tiny, and Natasha doesn’t trust any of the others.

Yelena stirs, a small whimper falling from her lips. Natasha tries to shush her gently, but it doesn’t work, and her sister keeps squirming. Her cries are starting to grow in volume, and one of the girls next to them sends them a dirty look.

“Yelena, Yelena. I’m here. You’re with me.” It’s the only words of comfort Natasha can offer her. She wishes she could tell her they were okay, that she was safe, that they were going to be fine. Instead, all she can do is assure her that her older sister had her. Yelena had stopped calling out for her mom a while ago, after her calls went unanswered and she finally realized no one was coming to rescue them. Natasha shifts them around, turning her back towards the others and away from prying eyes. Natasha turns Yelena on her lap, so that Yelena is facing her. “Yelena, look at me.”

Yelena shakes her head, so Natasha gently cups both sides of her face, titling her face up so that she has no choice. Yelena doesn’t resist, just locks her tear-filled eyes onto Natasha.

“I’m scared,” Yelena sobs through hitching breaths as her body trembles.

Natasha clutches her tighter and brings her closer, so close their noses are almost touching. “Don’t cry, Lena. Just sing with me.” Yelena frowns at her in confusion, and Natasha starts to sing under her breath, quietly, so that Yelena is forced to quite herself down and focus to hear the words.

She starts with the chorus, the part that Yelena knows and likes the best. “Bye, Bye, Miss American pie,” Natasha sings. The corner of Yelena’s lips quirks up in recognition. Nat pauses, prompting Yelena to sing the next line herself.

Her voice quivers, but she sings it anyways. “Drove my chevy to the levee…” Natasha nods in encouragement and joins her for the next verse. “But the levee was dry.” They sing the next few lines together. They near the last two lines of the chorus though, and this time, Natasha can’t allow her to sister to sing the last line. They hurt too much, they’re too real.

So she interrupts Yelena, skipping forward past the “Day that I die” line and jumping right into the next verse. Yelena doesn’t even question it, just follows her sister’s lead and allows herself to be completely absorbed in the whispered song.

Natasha sings almost the entire song to her sister, doing her best to remember as many lyrics as she could, and then starts over. She keeps singing, over and over again, until her voice starts to crack, and Yelena’s eyes are slipping closed in exhaustion.

“Tasha?” Clint calls, picking up the tension in his partner. She doesn’t respond, just stays frozen in her seat, locked in her own little world. “Hey,” He calls, a bit louder this time. He takes one hand off the wheel and places it on her shoulder gently. “Nat. What’s going on?” She’s shaking.

Instead of answering, Natasha claps her hands over her ears and leans forward, bending at the waist so she can rest her head atop her knees. She’s shaking her head, muttering something under her breath.

We all got up to dance

Oh, but we never got the chance

“Teach me, teach me!”

“…When you’re older.”

Natasha never got the chance to teach Yelena that ballet move. She wonders just how many other promises to her baby sister she’s broken.

“I’m going to pull over, Nat, okay?” A male’s voice comes from somewhere close by. His hand moves from her shoulder onto her back, to rub small circles on it.

Do you recall what was revealed

The day the music died?

She had never felt so stupid. Standing on that airway strip, holding a gun out in front of her, blocking Yelena. She had let her fall into the lie, childishly believe that maybe, just maybe Dad Alexei loved them like he said he did. As Alexei kneels before them, showing no sympathy to his daughters tears, she realizes that had never been the case.

The chorus starts again, and she feels bile rise in her stomach. “Bye Bye Miss American Pie” Natasha remembers how she had stolen that gun from a solider, shoved her sister behind her and threatened to kill numerous grown men for touching her. How desperately she had clung to Yelena when they’d been ripped apart. She hadn’t been ready to give up her sister, not ready to say goodbye to the American dream lie they had built side by side. “Drove my Chevy to the Levee but the levee was dry” The memory of Yelena’s face during those few days had haunted Natasha’s dreams for years. It had frightened her- even more so than the men with oversized guns. She had never seen her sister, who laughed at everything and loved the world with everything in her, look so despondent. She had tried telling her jokes to pry some kind of smile out of her. It didn't work. “This’ll be the day that I die” Yelena had sung those exact words in the car that day, and no lies were told. That day, when dad Alexei handed them back to Russians soldiers, they had both died. Died only to be remade and ruthlessly forged into something new, nothing more than weapons of mass destruction and trained killers.

There’s cussing to her left that pulls her back halfway to the present. She’s in a car, and she’s covered in vomit that runs down her front and onto her chest and lap. Clint has a hand on her, and he’s telling her just a second, Nat.

“Clint?” She asks, still slightly confused. She can still feel the weight of a smaller body on top of her, feel the soft blonde curls against her chin.

“I’m here, Tasha. Hold on.”

Oh, and there we were all in one place

A generation lost in space

With no time to start again

Countless little girls standing in a straight line, blank expressions, awaiting their next commands. They’re all mirrors of each other, no identity left for any of them to cling onto. Natasha scans over each girl, searching for the blonde waves she knows so well. She can’t find her.

The song drags on as Clint navigates the car off the road, coming to stop. He jumps out and jogs around, flinging Natasha's door open. She doesn’t move, so he reaches in and unbuckles her before slipping his hands into her armpits and pulling her out of the car. She tumbles to the ground, falling onto her knees.

And as I watched him on the stage

My hands clenched in fists of rage

No angel born in hell

Could break that Satan’s spell

Natasha catches Dreykov’s eyes on them, and she tightens her hold on Yelena’s hand. Her sister makes a small noise - she’s going to have bruises with how tight Nat is holding her- but doesn’t pull her hand away. Natasha curls her free hand into a tight fist, ready to swing if need be.

Dreykov says something to the men with guns next to him and points a finger at them. The soldiers start moving forward, and Natasha backtracks, tries to back up but Yelena stumbles at the sudden change in direction.

I saw Satan laughing with delight

The day the music died

Natasha screams her sister's name, gripping onto her as tightly as she can. Soldiers have hands on them both, ripping them away from each other. Dreykov is standing several feet away, a tiny smile on his face. Yelena is shrieking, hands desperately trying to keep her grasp on Natasha with all the strength in her six-year-old frame.

They lose their grip on each other and are dragged apart. Yelena’s voice dies out as they carry away the only thing Natasha had left.

Bye Bye Miss American Pie -

“Turn it off!” Natasha pleads, before promptly vomiting even more onto the ground. Clint’s hands support her head, keeping her from falling. “Off, please. I can’t. Turn it--” Clint’s hands leave her for a second as he scrambles over her, reaching through the open passenger door and slamming the power button on the radio.

Natasha lets out a breath, thankful for the silence. With the song no longer playing, her head is beginning to clear, the painful images retreating somewhere she could lock them away again.

“All done?” Clint asks her. She spits out one last string of bile and nods her head, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as Clint helps her sit up and lean against his leg. He doesn’t rush her, just allows her to sit and try to regain control of her breathing as he combs his fingers through her hair.

When Natasha can finally think again, she frowns at herself in disgust. “Sorry,” She apologizes.

“You don’t need to apologize to me,” he tells her. Clint reaches over and opens the backdoor, grabbing his go bag and digging around until his fingers find one of his clean T-shirts. He yanks it out, closes the door. “Can I help you change, or do you want to do it yourself?”

He’s honestly not even sure if she could change herself right now, with how much she was still shaking, but he gives her the choice anyways. She shrugs her shoulders, her way of accepting help without actually having to accept. “Okay, arms up.” Natasha raises her arms, and Clint carefully tugs her shift off her by the collar, making sure the filthy outside never touched any of her skin. He crumples up the shirt into a ball and tucks it in a bag. He bunches up his shirt at the neck hole and slides it over her head before gently guiding her arms through. It takes a lot for his partner to get to this state, and his concern grows with every passing second that goes by and Natasha is still out of it. He fixes the shirt over her torso, making sure she’s completely covered and then sinks down to the ground, leaning his back against the wheel of the car. There’s a soft breeze in the air, the slight chill nipping at their skin a welcome distraction. “C’mere,” he says, and guides Natasha into his side. She tenses for a moment, but then lets her head drop onto his shoulder, allowing Clint to take her weight. He wraps an arm around her to hold her close.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha repeats, and this time Clint doesn’t say anything. He knows she’s not apologizing to him, but someone not in their presence. He doesn’t push it. She’ll tell him when she’s ready, on her own time. He has guesses though. Clint had an older brother, and he knows what a protective but burnt-out older sibling looks like. He’s seen the way her eyes linger on certain little girls in public before snapping back, caught the way she had once brushed her fingers over a fabric doll with pink hair on a store shelf, heard the way she is able to understand children’s speech without any effort. She’s never mentioned a younger sibling before, but sometimes in her sleep, she mumbles a girl’s name, her hands clenched in fists as if trying to hold on to her.

He presses a kiss to her temple, a silent promise. He won’t push her- He doesn’t need to know exactly what happened. He knows how to support her and how to take care of her when she needs it and for now, that’s enough.

Years later, Natasha will press her forehead to an adult Yelena’s, both panting from the fight, Yelena upside down and laying in the wreckage of the red room. Dreykov is finally dead, by Yelena’s hand. Yelena cracks a joke, and Natasha smiles. They’ll never again be those little girls they once were, but they’ve finally found each other.

[sugar-petals]

♡ Levi Dating A Tall Girl

warnings ⚠️  some innuendo, possessiveness, jealousy, skinship

↳ NOTE. short captain ftw 

You don’t fall backwards the first time he hands you a big ass gun to practice target shooting. Finally someone who doesn’t act like a wobbly fool. Long legs. Better shooting stances. No questions asked. Levi likes that.

You can get the emergency supply tea box from the top shelf. He is jealous, this is cheesy, but still. Levi likes that.

You are hard to overlook. For pragmatic reasons since he lives in sheer chaos and needs to collect his squad from the most unholy places, Levi likes that.

But also... he has to confess he finds it fascinating to see you walk and talk. So, Levi likes that.

You can clean the ceiling. For obvious reasons: Levi likes that.

Paintjobs are easy to you. Levi likes that.

You can carry more weapons on you. Knife here, knife there, knives everywhere. Levi likes that.

Without even knowing or trying, you have a natural bold appearance. People don’t start trouble. The squad is peaceful and diligent in your presence. Him, too. He doesn’t say it, but he admits to himself that he feels protected. Levi likes that. A lot.

It might be outdated in the Survey Corps, but Levi enjoys calling you Madam. You really look like one in your Sunday outfit, just so you know. The height difference makes anyone buy into it. So, you go by „Ma’am“ wherever you go, knowing who addressed you that way first because he respects you. Levi likes that.

The advanced Trojan horse: You can smuggle him almost anywhere when you wear a dress. Levi is kinda going crazy with your legs being so up close though. My, my. What an interesting undercover mission. Levi likes that. You, too. Wink wink nudge nudge.

When cooking, you fool around planting your underboob on Levi’s head while the oven does its thing. He’s cursing a bunch of things. But he can’t deny you’re funny and he really fits in that spot, too. Levi likes that.

Your height means more to scrub in the shower. Levi does not shy away from grabbing a sponge for the ladies as we know. Only select people he will foam up personally, so, this is a knighting. If you can shave him, he can shampoo you, it’s tit for tat. A very cleanly exchange. Levi likes that.

In the comfort of your room, not in his, nor his office or elsewhere, really when nobody is watching — Levi sits on your lap. Plenty of space, so. He fits snugly right there. Levi likes that.

You look great when you ride a horse and handle horses well in general. You can get on there in two seconds without delay. Speed is key. Levi likes that.

And I mean.

What’s not to like, anyway? Levi’s captain crush on you equals your height in terms of intensity.

Technically, you, like all other people, qualify as a brat. A tall, noodly brat. But you’re nice to him and vice versa: Don’t deliberately nor accidentally get on his nerves. So the most he’ll do is grumble at you where others would get a speech. If you make a mistake with the equipment, he won’t let it slide for obvious survival-related reasons, but his tone is noticeably gentler, a crucial tinge.

The whole squad — especially the rowdy members who tease him the most ironically — spirals into envy, but doesn’t say anything lest they want Levi’s frown and explanation on how they were messing around while you worked. The guy’s proud of it and wants to deservedly hype your ethic to be honest.

So let us just note that special fondness he has and let it sink in.

Under the guise of “establishing order”, Levi has an excuse to make his schtick for you heard: Indirectly.

Levi scolds anyone calling you bigfoot or titan girl. His supposed reason: They didn’t clean well. In reality, he’s mad they pick on you but he can’t say it.

The captain is concerned that people don’t ruin your day and he’ll do something about it. That’s pretty damn astounding. Levi hardly bothers getting into other people’s mood management and personal things.

Armin thinks it’s adorable when Levi casually walks between you and Hanji, likely headed somewhere to buy conveniences because Sasha is dying to get food. Connie calls it the ‘Levi Sammich’ and laughs his ass off every. Single. Time.

Mad titan scientist she is, Hanji’s latest experiment involves a two-person battle maneuver where you have to carry Levi piggyback. He initially declines, but it looks adorable indeed, actually. You don’t really have to put efforts into holding him in place awkwardly, his legs are strong. So much about two-person maneuvers, the two of you fight well as a duo, your bodies complement each other. Best believe the same feat applies to what happens between four bedposts.

In more casual settings, he dons his usual scowl when he stands next to you, but he thinks it's sexy that you look at his shoulders from above. You can see the weight on them.

He wishes he had your shoulders. But then again, he wouldn’t want to change bodies at the end of the day, as surprising as it sounds. Levi knows he needs to be a compact little unit to do what he does.

A lot of people taunt you as a couple, but after some time of always reacting with anger right away, he becomes cooler about his self-worth. Levi realizes — man, he knows who he is.

Should you ever faint, he can catch you with ease. Levi Ackerman is the last guy to get crushed by his gf, that we all know. He’s not afraid of your body or your weight. No cowardice, no shame, no questions asked.

And as we know. He got a thing with your legs, don’t even try. Legs legs legs leggy legs, that’s all there is on Levi’s brain when you don’t wear a uniform but skirts during leisure time. He tries to block out that thought, unsuccessfully.

Titans he can go without, but you are his irreplaceable sexy goddess you know. Levi admires you.

Whenever you hit your hip or limbs at an awkwardly set-up table, Levi will position it elsewhere immediately. Low door frames he can’t do anything against, but he will tug at your sleeve twice every time you enter a room while walking behind you so you remember to stay alert. It’s... really cute how he’s tugging at you from below. I need a moment.

In the mornings, an even cuter thing happens: When his legs are too short to reach the ground while he’s sitting on an improvised barber chair of yours. You’re cutting his neck hair while he’s pouty about his tininess. You do your best to organize a smaller chair with Armin’s help later on.

But your height difference also causes some upheaval at the start or the relationship and brings up some deeper wounds.

You can easily help tie Eren’s man bun way up there and that makes Levi extra jealous. In fact, he feels like imploding to the point of creating a black hole. Even Mikasa is fine with it because it’s all on a friendly basis with no thought behind it. Like it’s just helping Eren get his hair under control for squad practice. But Levi sees red:

Out of sheer Ackerspite, he will grow out the top part of his undercut and ask you to tie up his hair, too. This guy is on fire. Like hello, he wants your hands in his hair like that as well!

He orders Mikasa to take care of Eren’s “brat mop on his head” every morning “for the sake of the cleanly survey corps dress code” without exception. Eren is totally confused, Mikasa likes the idea, and you are shocked.

Damn, this guy doesn’t play.

He wants you to stroke and tie only his sacred hair if he’s entirely honest with himself. Best time of the day for him. Levi ends up looking like your smol samurai bodyguard with his new hairstyle. You could fancy that in the long run.

And... you know he is insecure. You always know. And, if you’re honest yourself, are glad to have permission to give him such deliberate affection because he values it so much.

Levi hardly builds any romantic bonds and if he does, he easily feels left out because the truth is, he’s needier than the average person. It’s difficult if there are only few people close enough for that, since Levi needs a lot.

Eren is no viable competition, but you decide you gotta make that clear to the touch-starved little guy. Since... In reality, the man bun discussion is not about Levi being petty just because. It’s about wanting to have that connection with you. And: Your attention. Levi doesn’t look like it, but he needs it. A metric ton.

In fact, Levi is the biggest love-deprived attention whore on the entire island and that’s a hard fact.

So, what to do about it. First: Clean slate needed, because you’re a bit annoyed, too.

You sit down for dinner and talk to Levi about how you are not interested in stealing Eren from Mikasa, nor do you think Levi looks ugly or invisible compared to Eren because of the height. You want to be a helpful squad member and he has no business imposing his brat hair rules to make himself exclusive out of fear, as if you would jump Eren as soon as he doesn’t look. And that he should say when he’s envious or wants something, point-blank. You’re very willing to give him all the attention to the moon and back alright.

Levi, grumpy at himself, apologizes for wanting to control the situation instead of saying that he wishes for time with you and makes tea.

He’s feeling mighty called out but owns up to all of this having been a knee-jerk response. Guy’s hard on himself, but that’s how he adapts his behavior.

The whole truth is, he knows that Eren is a lot easier to be around while he, Levi, is a complicated guy that is arguably hard to approach in random matters, even for loved ones.

He beats himself up for that and wants to be more emotionally and physically accessible to you so you can shower your affections on him the way you want to. That’s what it really boils down to.

That means fishing for old parts of his youth he didn’t allow. Levi wants to challenge himself to be more open to receiving. He knows he keeps his appeal on lock and it’s time to change that because he sees that you enjoy such closeness. Just the way he does, but secretly.

He also says to you that you can always touch him the way you desire after work.

Levi sees how you like being hands-on and how you do it, and makes it firm that you don’t have to walk on eggshells, hold back, or ask like it’s a delicate matter.

Levi sees relationships in simple terms: Since you’re together, of course you can touch him. It’s part of the whole thing by default to him and he even assumed you took it for granted like there’s telepathy going on.

In fact, brace yourself: For the lack of a better word, it’s even his expectation that this happens. Not like an obligation but as in, that you take opportunities is a given to him, he anticipates it.

You reply that it’s good he communicates this, it’s got to be outspoken. His views on how this whole thing goes has to be out in the open. It gives you a lot more clarity on his boundaries, too.

Before another bout of jealousy unearths more taken-for-granted things, Levi realizes he has to make up his mind that he has to talk about his limits.

So, he also says he entrusts it to you to find the very right moments for skinship.

That entails kissing and pinning and sitting close to another. And sex. Which is pretty damn enjoyable with him, the real fucking deal. So steamy. My God.

And he makes it clear he does his paperwork fast and you can always ask, he’s never too busy to postpone things entirely. He’d rather die the next day after winding in the sheets than handling paper. Levi can’t sleep anyways so it gets his mind off. It’s always welcome and he tells you not to be hesitant.

Levi is the type to absolutely pick up the cues right away — and proceed to really make out against a wall really intensely — so you’re under no obligation to wave a giant red cloth in front of him like he’s a Spanish bull or whatever. He gets the hints and goes along. Not to worry.

You also ask Levi what he thinks about you initiating romantic things and he shrugs — „Do what you want.“

The brand of romance Levi is out for you can already guess anyways. Tea and more tea.

For now, that’s where you agree to “leave it at that” after he thanks you for being straightforward.

You launch your first affections before bedtime. He lets you sleep in his bed, damn right. You really have to be a priority to be able to reside there, I’m telling you. Levi rests with one eye open and in his harness, you have all the blanket for yourself to cuddle up in. That won’t stop you from peppering his face with a few very deliberately placed smooches.

Levi can’t deny he’s a sucker for getting forehead kisses. He drops his hygiene protocol just for that. Safe to say his man bun jealousy from earlier that day cools off in no time. Not to say it shatters completely when you go for the gold that is his pretty little mouth. He’s so overwhelmed emotionally, he almost cries. Levi never thought someone would do this with him.

You repeat the same thing next day, behind the barracks after sunset. Levi holds you real tight. He’s so addictive in the best way. Going by how breathless it all winds up to be, he doesn’t want the kisses to end.

What your height is handy for here? He can gaze up to the night sky when he locks lips with you. Levi, as we know, likes seeing the moon and training his neck flexibility anyways. But that’s not the purpose behind why he’s so down to kiss you so passionately, rest assured.

If he tiptoes a little, he can park his pretty face under your chin after you both ran out of air. Levi’s drug... your long neck. He thinks it smells so good.

He murmurs in response, but he actually wants to be gently cooed at and petted when he rests there. Just a little. He’s humming. Ah, so satisfying. Guess you aced the „Do what you want“ part. You’ll do this with him Lord knows for how many times.

Levi cuddles up at your chest later. Plenty of space for him, and he loves how your voice resounds from there.

Oh— by the way. Since Hanji installed one between the two apple trees outside: It’s always nice to sleep in a hammock with a tall girl. The fabric doesn’t fold him in, he can watch the stars with you off duty. You give him a reason to be content, and that’s the sweetest thing. Levi’s all in love, he’s really grateful. You go, Ma’am.

— more levi writings: sub!levi hc | levi’s happy end/tea shop hc

[jmnjmnjmn]

Eternal beings | Chapter 1

Pairing: Vampire!Jungkook x Human!Reader

Key words: supernatural, vampire.

Word count: less than 3,000

Warnings: swearing,  sadness, jealousy, mentions of murder

Inspo board

Masterlist

In the spirit of Halloween I decided to write a whole series about Vampire!Jungkook. I know should’ve been posting it throughout October and not on Halloween... Bare with me okay? There’s more to come.

Walking through the city at two in the morning isn’t as cute and mysterious as it may seem. The streets are empty and dark despite the street lights being on and every noise sounds like a forecast for something dangerous, especially when you're a girl walking home from work by yourself. You recently took up night shifts at the convenience store you were working at part time. Your boss was more than happy when you announced to her that you can work nights for half of the week. It was always hard to find people for those hours. With all of your classes at college being online this semester you had more time to work and earn money for rent and other things. You actually liked working at night, because there weren’t many customers then if any at all, so you had freedom to spend most of your time at work reading magazines, studying or sitting on your laptop. The only drawback of working at that time though was the walk home.

You pulled the steel grating over the door and locked it slowly in the faint light of the neon sign above the door. Before walking away you pulled on the padlock to make sure it’s definitely locked right. When you didn’t feel it budge under your fingers you turned on your heel and started speed walking home. Your apartment wasn’t further than twenty five minutes away from the shop and though it felt like a short stroll during the day at night it almost always seemed like a pilgrimage. “Fortunately for me-” You thought. “-the summer is in full swing and the nights aren’t so cold anymore.” You shivered at the thought of walking home in winter time. On the other hand the increase in temperature caused all sorts of shady people to come from their homes and clubs out onto the streets. For example you already walked past more than a dozen of drug deals and were cat called by drunk men leaving the bars so many times you couldn’t count anymore. And that’s only this summer season.

Despite all those unpleasantries you kept working and getting the money you desperately needed to pay the rent for your small flat and lead a decent life in the city. And because of those same unpleasantries you came up with a special system of walking home from work that made you a tad bit more comfortable and it went like this. First: leave the shop with earbuds in your ears, but no music playing, walk with big strides and your head up to notice any potential danger and stay alert no matter how tired you are. Second: walk only the bigger streets with street lamps and businesses on them, preferably ones that are open at night so there’s always someone to run to for help. That part wasn’t too hard since you worked right in the center of the city and lived close by. You smiled to yourself, thinking of the deal you cut on your current apartment. You were subletting from one of your college friends who left to study abroad for a year. He didn’t want to break the lease on his place and not have something to come back to when he finishes his studies, especially since his apartment was in such a perfect location for a young student. That led him to looking around for someone to sublet to and… Tadah! You got a beautifully furnished, one bedroom apartment right in the city for a price that was unheard of in that area. Only downside was that you had to vacate the place in less than ten months.

A loud sudden sound pulled you out of your thoughts, but what followed made your heart skip a beat. A sound so faint it was barely hearable, but clear enough to make you stop in your tracks.

“Please, n-no.” The voice definitely belonged to a male. It sounded as if its owner was struggling to breath out the words. You heard him inhale sharply and ask again. “P-lease, stop.” His begging words sent a shiver down your spine. Something really bad was happening around that corner. “N-no.” You felt your shoulders tense up. You didn’t want to get involved with something dangerous, but you couldn’t just walk by a possible assault or maybe something worse. You tightened your grip on your bag and started to walk back quietly. Your instincts started to kick in slowly as you made the difficult choice between the two possible options. Fight or flight.  “Flight.” You  thought to yourself. “From a safe place I will call the police. I promise.” You sweared in your head to the man around the corner.

“Stop.” Said a second voice also belonging to a man by the pitch of it.

“Please.” The first man said. “Please.” He repeated now with more strength in his voice. Within a second you heard shuffling indicating a fight broke out between the pleading man and his attacker. You started pressing in the police number on your phone and started moving faster as the noises started getting louder and closer to the alleyways exit. The very same exit from which you were trying to back away from.

“I told you to stop.” The second man repeated himself. Right when you were just about to turn the corner and start running to safety with the police on the phone two men fell to the ground in front of the alleyways exit. Both of them in disheveled suits. The older one, which you assumed was the previously heard beggar, was clearly losing to the other man. You made your last step back and tried to turn to the side to start running when you heard the losing man speak. 

“Help me.” He  croaked looking in your direction and blowing your already weak cover. Standing in the shadowy street you thought he wouldn’t be able to see you backing away, but he did and his attacker now saw you as well. “H-elp.” He tried to repeat his statement, but the other man pushed him to the ground getting rid of the bits of air in his lungs. “What should I do?” You asked yourself. The nerve connections in your brain made a snap judgment for you. The scene you had before you looked just as frightening as comical. What even was this situation? Two well dressed men, who you would think are well behaved and well above resulting in physical fights if you saw them in the shop you were working at, were playing some murderous tug of war right in front of you in the middle of the night. As you realised the oddity of the situation it stopped being so scary all of a sudden. “They’re just drunk office rats fighting in an alley.” You thought to yourself but didn’t put your phone back down in case things escalated to something more dangerous. You continued to back away when the standing man spoke.

“How many times do I have to repeat myself?” He asked in an authoritative tone, but you weren’t going to listen. You turned around and made a step to your left wanting to reach the main road again and get away from this bull. “Stop.” He said tiredly. You turned the corner and started to run before he could say or do anything more to you. You pressed the green button on your phone screen calling the police.

“112.” Said a female operator on the other side of the phone after just a short moment. “Hello. There’s a fight going on near my house. Two men. It looked pretty bad.” You said nervously.

-

You woke up the next morning around noon. Having already forgotten the events of last night you got ready for work. You were covering a shift in the afternoon at the shop for your co-worker Jimin. He worked there a couple of months longer than you, showed you the ropes on your first day and since you got along pretty well you became work friends. You decided not to eat breakfast at home and just grab something at the shop. Just like that within twenty minutes of you waking up you were out the door. 

The mid day was warm but you had your jacket in the bag ready to be put on in the late hours of the night when you’ll be walking home. You turned the corner to get to the main street and have a stroll to work in the sun when you were met with a hoard of policemen blocking the sidewalk. You crossed the road and took a different route than usual, not bothering to think twice about the reason the police were where they were right now.

As you entered the shop you noticed Jimin watching television on the small screen hanging over the cigarette shelf. The bell over the door rang when you closed it and Jimin instantly turned his head towards you, greeting you with a warm smile as you walked towards him.

“Great to finally see you.” He said, taking off his name tag.

“You’re only happy to see me today, because I’m relieving you of your shift.” You joked and he laughed quietly. 

“Only today.” He said smiling and let you behind the counter. “I have to run. Yoongi’s probably already waiting for me.” He waved you goodbye, grabbed his bag and headed for the door.

“Go. Have fun.” You called after him smiling.

You turned the volume down on the TV and cranked it up on the ancient radio on the counter. Jimin always watches TV at work while you prefer listening to music and shuffling through magazines or newspapers. You pinned your name tag on and started looking for a good read as a bell rang signaling an arrival of a customer. You picked a fitness magazine and leaned on the shelves behind you and started reading about “the benefits of doing squats”. After a couple of minutes the customer who earlier entered the shop came to the counter with his pickings. You scanned the last item when he asked you to turn on the volume on the TV. You pushed the “+” button on the remote and was about to tell the man the amount he has to pay for the items when you heard the speaker's voice on TV describe something horrible. 

“... A gruesome murder. Victim: a man in his thirties, possibly a nearby office worker. His exact identity is still being confirmed by the police.”

“Horrible.” Said the customer. “And so close by. Who would do such a thing?” He asked, sounding truly concerned.

“Twelve thirty, sir.” You said politely. That’s exactly why you didn’t like watching TV at work. This particular television set was about twenty years old and had an antenna so crooked it played only three channels, two of them being news. There was no day there wouldn’t be bad news. A natural distaster, an economic crash, a new riot or war somewhere in the world or, like today, a murder. The man scanned his card and left with his things. As the door was closing behind him you reached for the remote to mute the TV again.

“Estimated time of the murder is thirty minutes after two in the morning.” Said the speaker and you quickly put two and two together. Glancing at the screen you reached your shaky hand for your phone and started searching the internet for more information on the event. A cold shiver went down your whole body when you read an article header stating the place where the “gruesom murder” took place. It was that alleway near your building. You dialed your friend Taehyung’s number still looking at the screen, waiting for more details to be described by the news anchors.

“The number you are calling is unavailable.” You heard an automated message and hung up the phone. “What the hell do I do now?” You whispered to yourself. “I called the police last night and described the situation as well as I could.” You thought. “It’s not my fault they didn’t intervene… Or did so too late.” You explained to yourself. “Still, shouldn’t they have my number saved somehow? And shouldn’t they be calling me up right now for questioning? I was there after all.” You couldn’t wrap your head around the idea that you could have seen a murderer last night. “Maybe it wasn’t them.” You started wandering. “Maybe they left right after they saw me and someone else did… That.” Another announcement by the news anchors pulled you out of this train of thought. “Police just confirmed the identity of the victim. Thirty five year old (Victim’s name), an office manager at (Company’s name) was brutally murdered last night on Third.” You covered your mouth with your free hand when the picture of the victim popped up on the screen. It was the man from last night, the one that lost the fight. “His body was found by a passerby over four hours after the murder took place.”

“Impossible.” You breathed out. “I called the police right around two. How is it that they didn’t send anyone to check on the situation?” You thought and dialled Taehyung’s number again.

“The number you are calling is unavailable.”

“Shit.” You hissed. You really wanted to talk to a friend right now and figure out what to do. Taehyung was your closest friend right now, you knew each other from highschool and hung out all through your first years of college to this day. You dialed the police number once again in the last twelve hours.

[lovely-necromancy]

A Cure for Insomnia Ch 17

Living with the Cowell's is going about as well as you'd expected it to go. In other words it's more or less a disaster for your mental health. Which is ironic considering you didn't put this much stress on yourself when you were sure a stalker was watching you.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the stalker didn't own your house and wasn't in your personal space at every turn.

You'd honestly been expecting Little Jo to be the biggest space invader but Dia and Nate were constantly hovering around you. Nate had taken up the other spare room, or rather his room away from home, the minute he heard you'd be staying with the Cowells. He's made it his job drive you to and from work for the past two days and you both take breaks together now closing the store when you do. Then the second you cross the threshold Dia is right by you either asking for some help cooking or rushing you off for hobby time in the sitting room. It's like living in a 1920's story book, minus the extreme prejudice you would've faced.

It's only been two days and you can't find a way to ask for more space. You tried asking to go on a walk earlier and it turned into a partial jog with Nate. You really just need a moment to yourself it's been five or six days since you last had some 'me' time. All your nerves are shot and you are just a few minor inconveniences away from snapping at someone.

And it would not be a smart idea to nap at your boss. Your boss who's been so considerate and helpful offering his support to you through this whole mess of a situation.

Nonetheless you need space and your own clothes. Nate's don't fit you properly and they're uncomfortably itchy against your skin. His detergent is also very smelly, more in the chemical sense than in a bad sense. Though it could be a bad sense considering the headache you've had the past day from the over bearing smell. You know it won't end well for you but you desperately need to go back home and grab your own clothes and maybe even your car.

Having the illusion of more freedom would put you more at ease.

After all it isn't like you want to knowingly put yourself in harms way, you just can't stand the suffocation any longer. That's why you decided to bring it up during dinner, and why you are now sat in the tensest atmosphere this table has possibly ever experienced.

“Installation ain't done yet.” is Big Jo's gruff response.

It's as if that short sentence gave everyone premission to breathe again.

“I'm not planning to stay, I just need my own clothes.” you press.

Nate glances over to you before placing his fork to the side, “Then why do you need your car?”

“I'd just feel more comfortavle if I had it.....y'know instead of just relaying on you for rides.” you gesture around to the table trying to get someone yo come to your defense.

Big Jo pinches the bridge of his nose, it's been a stressful week for him as well. You don't mean to be ungrateful in this scenario but you are Autistic and the routine you've spent months carving out for yourself is being ruined. You are wearing smelly itchy clothes and need to have something you have control over. Not to mention you're the one who actively experienced the home invasion and were sat in a hospital for two days.

Big Jo can deal with you asking to go collect your thing, as far as you're concerned anyway. You're at least entitled to that much.

Dia puts her hand on Jo's arm and he sighs, “Fine, if Nate takes you. You can go to the cottage.”

“Tio, they can't have the car.” Nate is wildly failing his arms and motioning to you as he explains that you're a known flight risk.

Great, nothing's been resolved and you are back to a tense dinner in the Cowell's home.

“Fine I won't take the car, just lemme give it to someone to watch it for the...the what's it gonna be a week?” directing the question to Big Jo who's been handling the security detail for your home.

He gestures in a so-so manner.

“Yea, just lemme give it to someone to watch for the week.” you pause before throwing your hand up, “Because let's face it none of us have any idea where those two are now, and they could've easily tampered with my car.”

That was the worst possible thing to say because the second you finish you sentence the table erupts into chaos. Dia and Little Jo voicing their concerns over you driving your car, Big Jo and Nate all but forbidding you from driving and you trying to find some sort of compromise.

“What if we had it towed to Whistle's? Nate takes me there after work and we make sure nothing's wrong with my car.” looking around the table at the mixed reactions before you.

“I'll call Lewis for a tow in the morning and you both can go after work.”

“thank you.” you say relieved that you can finally gain back control over your life. Maybe get a little bit of space a long with it.

Everyone calms down and goes back to eating. The air is still so tense you could practically cut it but without your constant stirring it seems to settle. The rest of the night goes by uneventfully, you've changed into some pajamas and are ready to lay awake staring at the ceiling for hours.

The antsy energy you've been building up these past few days have left you without sleep. Tomorrow the hallucinations will probably start up, you wonder if they'll be worse thanks to your healing concussion. Hallucinations aside, your real problem is being alone with your thoughts for the next seven or eight hours.

You have nothing to occupy your mind with and thus nothing to help block out the invasive thoughts.

You'd finished the TAZ graphic novels while you were still at the hospital. The Cowells had taken you straight to their home after you got discharged, so you hadn't been able to grab your switch or any smaller art supplies.

Ultimately knowing that all this was for your safety and benefit you understand them wanting to keep you away from your home. The sight of you attack. Even a supply run could prove dangerous. Try telling that to your restless and bored mind. Constantly feeling like one of the undead wandering around aimlessly with no real purpose has certainly not done anything good for your mental health The lack of stimulation was definitely making it harder to mask and not just explode in  frustration. To just let loose and rage at everything: from the situation to your stalkers, hell even to Jo and yourself. The after the brief flash of rage it would be washed away by the overwhelming guilt you felt about being in this web and dragging everyone around you into it. Whether directly or indirectly.

Safe to say, it is not good to be alone with your thoughts right now.

And it is with that restless energy that your night of staring at the ceiling turns into a morning of staring at the ceiling. Until a knock at your door signals the start of breakfast. A routine you've recently become apart of while staying with the Cowells. Getting ready for the day you make your way to the dining room, not before steadying your nerves and static filled mind with a long and drawn out huff of air.

Not quite cathartic enough to be viewed as a sigh.

And with that you begin you day.

The morning fades into late afternoon and you find yourself in the shop a little before close, just looking through the isles. A vaguely human figure, much too tall to truly be an actual person, had brushed past Nate and into one of the isles. Honestly you're sure it's one of your hallucinations but you still have to double check the isles before you finish locking up the shop. Today had been really slow and you can only recall a handful of patrons throughout the day, though you haven't been with it enough to actually hace much accuracy on that statement.

Nevertheless you are searching for stragglers, thankfully you find none. Really hoping to get out and to Whistle's soon, then home to grab things that'll keep you occupied. Things that are finally yous; actual comfortable clothes, that smell like you too. Eyes blinking in rapid succession at your near giddy nerves.

For once your tic helps you vision, you're able to catch the book laid on its side. Its cover a deep russet nearly matching the shelf in color, you'd have missed it if it weren't for the inverted shapes that pressed themselves into your eyelids almost burning the scenery into your memory. Picking the book up you try to discern where it had come from.

Upon further inspection it appeared to be more of a journal. Half written in English with margins made out it – was that German? Yeah that was definitely German, the Eszetts is way too distinctive for it to be any other language. Poorly drawn out sketches littered several pages as you flip past them. Until you see a familiar but scrathy image. It's of a symbol a circle with an 'x' through it.

As you look at the jagged lines you can't really place where you've seen this symbol before. It's so familiar but the ringing bells do nothing to help you remember where you've seen this symbol. Flipping further in you catch sight of a drawing of a being that is slim and taller than the trees. Wasn't that the figure you'd seen moments before? Right as you were doing you check for customers? You're beginning to think this shop's haunted.

“Hey YN, coast clear?” The sound of Nate's voice stops you from inspecting the book any further.

Placing it back on the shelf and nestling it in between to larger books you turn and head out of the isle.

“Yea, no customers.”

“C'mon then, I don't want to be out all night.”

Rolling your eyes at Nate's exaggeration, Whistle's probably wouldn't take more than an hour tops and you won;t take long gathering your things from the house – you follow Nate out the door.

Waiting close behind him as he locks up. One thing about the attack is you've become hyper aware of your surroundings and are nearly always on high alert now when you're out in the open like this. Luckily in most spaces you had already noted the number of exits and where to find them. Having to plan escape routes ahead of emergencies might not be the healthiest mentality but it's kept you sane throughout this ordeal. Thank you American public school system.

When you get to the auto shop you see a familiar ticcing brunette talking to a group of mechanics as he leans on your car.

“Who the hell is that?” Nate says squinting at Toby who's practically laid out across the hood of your car.

Weird, haven't they met yet? Toby did hang out at the shop for an entire day. Had Nate not noticed him then? What about the picnic? Before you can say anything Nate's already out of the car and shouting something to the group. Most of the men standing around tense up as Nate storms up to them.

But you catch the dead look in Toby's eye, the other is still horribly out of commission. Honestly without your glasses faces blur from so far away but it's undeniable that there isn't a light reflecting in his eye. Nate seems to be directing his lecture to Toby who doesn't appear to do anything. He's like a big old house cat, tired and done with everyone's shit if they aren't actively feeding him.

Sighing you exit the car, your only real thought is defusing your Karen.

You aren't at all surprised when Toby locks onto the movement of you walking towards the group. The man perks right up and lifts himself off your car in one fluid motion. He's so agile, just like a cat. You can't help but smile a bit at the connection automatically reaffirming with yourself that Toby would totally push over a precariously placed glass of water.

“Hey, wh-mrrow-what'd you bring the car in for?” Toby asks side stepping Nate, completely ignoring the older man.

“Huh – oh, yea boss wanted it checked out to make sure it wasn't like tampered with – I guess. Y'know after the accident.” you know the mechanics probably know what happened to you, you do live in a small town after all. Gossip stops for no one. But you do have control over details and talking about the incident and you won't be letting go of that any time soon.

Toby's one good eye darkens as he nods, “Gotcha, well it's fine even had Jess take it for a drive. Drove fine. Fixed that weird clicky thing it did on left turns, you're welcome.”

Hah, during the drive through Franklin Toby lost it after two left turns. He noticed the clicking sound your car would make, oddly only on left turns, and started bitching about it to you. At the time you just thought he was being funny when he'd complained you needed to take it in to the shop to fix that. Guess he wasn't. But what's the point of fixing something so trivial?

You cross your arms and are about to sass Toby about how unnecessary that was when Nate interrupts.

“Well since the car's cleared we'd better go settle the bill with Lewis.”

“No need, no parts to replace plus my free labor.” Toby looks away from Nate and back to you “It w-w-was so sl-o-ow-w so I told the old man we were dating and I'd been wanting to fix up your car.”

Normally you'd protest a friend or anyone giving you free services but since this was on the Cowells' dime you weren't going to burden them anymore.

“That's sweet – really really stupid, but sweet.”

Nate's already moving around you two and motioning towards his car as he says, “Well thank you, now we really need to get going YN. I don't want to be out late.”

You nod to Nate, turning and saying bye to Toby from over your shoulder.

When you suddenly remember, “Wait, hey Tobias can you take care of my car for the week? I know it's probably a weird request, but I'm sorta “grounded” right now and can't drive till the cottage is set up. A little worried the battery will drain from disuse.”

If it weren't for the mask and swollen eye the confused sneer of his would be clear to everyone on the lot. He sputters for a moment before speaking up.

“Ok? I mean like that's valid – whoa – a valid concern...but your car's not that old. But I guess I'll watch it? I don't have Connor so it'll have to stay in the lot tonight, that ok?”

Oh this stupid beautiful boy just gave you an out. Probably not the one he meant to give you but you are taking it and running as fast as you can.

“Or, or, or-”

“No, no, and no. You can't be trusted to not just drive off in the dead of night.” Nate cuts in.

It took a bit of coaxing but after calling the house and getting Dia's blessing you obtained one night to yourself. Really it'd be one night spent at the lodge but it was still better than being a guest in someone else's house for the night, this way you're a guest at the lodge for the night. A little mini vacation if you will. And Toby seemed fine to go with you to the cottage while you packed a bag with your essentials, before you both go back to the lodge.

He even agreed to drop you off at the bookshop in the morning.

“Are you seriously going stir crazy after five days?” he asks as you pull up to the cottage.

“it's more their constant smothering I'm over. I know everyone's worried but I still need my own agency. Y'know?”

“Yea....I do.” he murmurs with a solemn look about him before he exits the car and makes his way to the front door.

Your steps falter as you near the cottage. A few flashing images pass through your mind before you shakily inhale. Fortunately Toby is right beside you squeezing your hand to remind you of his presence. You aren't alone this won't end like Monday night.

Opening the door the house is quiet and just as you had last seen it. Nothing was disrupted, even peeking into the bathroom where you expected a crime scene to be – only a toppled shower curtain and over turned bath mat remained.

It doesn't really feel like your house right now. A fuzzy sensation clouds your thoughts, like your brain is trying to protect you from connecting with this place after your recent trauma. Although you aren't sure how you actually feel there's a strong sense of discontentment.

Noticing how you linger in the threshold of the bathroom Toby gently guides you into your room, all without a word. Leaving you alone in your room to collect your things. You move around at a moderate pace, you aren't drawing this out but you aren't rushing to leave soon either. A handful of shirts, a set of jeans, shorts, and joggers later you are grabbing your switch. Before diving into your art supplies you hear a thud across the hall.

You freeze as if ice water had just been poured onto you keeping you in place.

“Tobias!” you call out not moving.

“Fuck – sorry I acc-ack-accidently kicked your trash can.”

When had he gone to the bathroom?

“Are you ok?” you receive a quick 'yea' in response.

Jittery and in no mood to sit and draw you pick up an embroidery kit you'd been meaning to rip into. Should keep your attention long enough, but maybe you should grab another kit just in case. Bag loaded with enough of your things so you aren't driven mad during your stay – you turn to leave but decide to grab your goat plush as an after thought before leaving your room.

Walking out and into the rest of your house you notice a lack of Toby anywhere. Going towards the front door you spot him as you pass the kitchen. He's messing with your garbage can before he takes out the bag and ties it up.

“Wha' cha doin'?” he's been a bit off since you both arrived but you don;t blame him. Not like you're fairing any better.

“I, I kicked it and a whole bunch of trash came out. So then I had to put it-it all back, but there's a lot here and you aren't gonna be here for a week....I, I ju-just thought it'd be better to tak-take it out now.”

Nodding, you're thankful to have such a good friend looking out for you. It would've sucked to come home to a toxic waste site because you'd left trash in the garbage for three weeks.

You probably just thought it came from the bathroom because of the echo or something. Paranoia's been a pain this past week. Maybe you should look into getting a roommate, they might help.

“They're not that helpful trust me.”

“Wow, did I say that out loud?” Toby nods, “Fuck I am out of it. How are you and Tim doing?” you might be deflecting/ignoring your own issues. But Toby had his own shit going on Monday night and you doubt he's talked to anyone.

“We're fine. Just fucking hate him.” the sharp jerk of his head keys you in that he's very much not fine.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Who are you, my fuck-ing therapist?”

“Fine, wanna bitch then?”

He comes off the defensive like he realizes that he's talking with you right now. His good eye down cast after he relaxes his stance a bit.

You go to grab your kettle, filling it up and placing it down on the stove to warm up.

“Any preference on tea? I've got a few.” it was very much more than a few.

A chair screeches as Toby drags it out to sit down at your small kitchen table. He doesn't respond so you get one of your special blends out. This blend has rose hips which you normally dislike anything scented or flavored with roses but the ginger and cinnamon can normally over power the slightly floral sting of this tea. Plus it's made with the intention of healing the heart and promoting self love. A spell tea of sorts. Toby could probably use a little pick me up, you always did after a fight with a friend. Getting out the honey you ready the tea infuser into the cup waiting for the kettle's whistle.

“So just wanna start talking....or should I ask questions?” you turn to face Toby as you lean against the counter.

He's taken his mask off and placed it on the table, of course you remember his deteriorating face but it still surprises you to see it after a few days of not actually seeing his face. Maybe you'll get used to it and one day won't be so fascinated by his teeth.

“Tim's just a dick who thinks he has a right to act like he's my dad. Li-ike-like I'm twenty-four he doesn't need to constantly question the things I do. He doesn't have any room to talk to me about my mistakes he literally could've fucked staying here up for us....” Toby head had been snapping to the left several times during his rant and it continued as he got very quiet suddenly.

Tim could've messed staying here up? Did he mean here as in Kepler or the lodge? Barclay did have to break up the fight maybe he didn't want any of the trio in but let Toby stay out of concern for his condition.

“Hey I'm sure it wasn't that bad, I could even talk to Barclay to get you unbanned from the lodge.”

He takes the mug you pass him and spoons some honey into it/ It's weird to see half his face drawn into concentration since the other half isn't able to emote yet. Holding the cup in his hands he stares at the swirling steam rising up as you bring your own mug over to the table taking a seat. Not once does he look up at you as you stir in a bit of honey into your own tea.

Toby's neck snaps, “Am I...is it bad that I don't want you to?”

You send him a slightly pitying smile.

“No hun, you're upset. And you're having a totally valid reaction to a falling out.”

Toby rolled his eyes, at least you thin he did. Hard to tell with just the one.

“My therapist would love you. That's the kind of bullshit she tells me like all the time.”

Not knowing what to say to that you just nod as he continues to stare at you.

You both continue to talk, well you continue to let Toby rant about how stupid and dumb Brian and Tim are as you finish your tea. You still don't know the details of the fight but it sounds like the cause was just the last straw between the men and not the actual catalyst. According to Toby the other two tend to baby him or talk over his ideas and suggestions because he's the youngest of the group. Twice Toby mentioned Tim's paranoia and how that was really the cause of the tension between them. And how Brian wasn't any help because he'd always side with Tim to make sure his boyfriend was ok.

Toby was very bitter when talking about Brian's role in this more than Tim's. As if his role of passive bystander just sent Toby over the edge. Which from the way he spoke seemed like it's been dragging on for some time. All of this was painting an even worse picture of the smug asshole. Though you didn't break your silence or series of nods and hums until Toby off handily mentioned Brian getting him in trouble with his therapist by saying he was the one who started the fight.

“He fucking snitched....wait no he lied?!” Toby had to blink a few times before he finally understood what had gotten you so upset.

“Yea I mean it's not that big a deal. I was able to tell Clarise I missed a few days of my meds and she made me set reminders in front of her on the call.”

Apparently Clarise was sure Toby suffered from Bipolar Disorder, he was very flippant when he told you like it wasn't anything big. When you mentioned ADHD he kind of blanked. He got fidgety when you mentioned the symptoms you saw and  nervously told you his medication was working just fine for him. Not wanting to make him more uncomfortable you dropped the topic. Soon it was dark and you needed to leave to make it to the lodge for dinner.

“You sure you want to take the garbage out? What if Chonk is over there?” joking as you lock the door.

“Good point. Trash you live here now.” he dumps the bag onto your lawn and walks towards your kia.

“Toby!”you gasp out, which sounds weird amidst your laughter.

He stops and looks at you his expression more unclear than it's been all evening. Your heart skips a beat as you stare at each other for a moment, your laughter gone now.

“It's weird to hear you say 'Toby'.”

That's all he says before he grabs the bag and carrying it to the side of your house where your bins are.

The conversation in the car is pretty light in comparison to what it has been. Just jokes getting thrown around and sharing the gossip that you'd head in the hospital because nurses' can't keep their mouths shut. Neither of you know any of the characters in the stories but they're still pure gold. Like the man who came in after getting his hand stuck in a cookie jar. Nervous and scared his wife would find out he's been eating the new holistic dog treats. A few stories or more like vents about the auto shop got thrown in. By the time you got to the lodge both of you were in lighter spirits.

Everyone was ecstatic to see you up and about and made an extra spot for you at the table. You didn't miss how Barclay would rise an eyebrow every time you locked eyes. You just roll your eyes and continue eating. When it got time to settle in for the night you were planning to commandeer the couch but Toby offered his room.

More accurately he offered a chance to hang out with Connor which you readily accepted. The rottie was just as excited to see you, bounding over the second you stepped through the door.

“Sigh if only there was a way to see Connor everyday.” you say dramatically whistful as you hold the pup's jowls in your palms.

Toby responds in turn in a drawn out sarcastic monotone “Oh my, how sad your life must be. There's only one solution, marry me. So Connor can finally have the second parent he's always wanted” he ends with a scratch behind the pups right ear.

“I was just gonna kick you and steal your dog.”

He turns to face you, “I can't feel-”

“So if I kicked you in the back of the knee it wouldn't buckle?”

Toby goes silent before conceding to your point. A mumbled “Connor would avenge me.” is heard.

After you two settle down you both hop into bed to try and get some sleep. Toby was holding your switch hostage so you had no choice but to “sleep” now.

You really hoped he changed his sheets from the other day. You'd hate to find out you're laying in milk stained sheets. Pushing those thoughts away as your body finally starts to relax, you can feel when your mind begins to drift into the beginning stages of sleep.

“Tobes, you can crash at my place if you need to.” is the last thing you say before falling into a peaceful slumber.

Toby on the other hand wasn't able to get much sleep at all that night. He couldn't shake the feeling something bad was about to happen. And unlike Tim he didn't think it was because of you, it just had something to do with you. You were too kind to be one of The Operator's proxies, with all the clues of His presence in this town you were one of many red herrings. Looking over to you Toby only hoped you wouldn't get hurt in the crossfire. Not like Lyra did, he doesn't think he could handle something like that. Especially with how shitty Tim's been lately, he's on edge and constantly about to snap. He just needs a break from everything. Maybe then the weight in his stomach would go away.

In the morning Toby's keen to hold up his end of the deal and drive you to work. You buy him breakfast and an iced coffee from Dunkin' and a pup cup for Connor. The three of you eat in your car while you wait for Nate to arrive. When he does you say your goodbyes and head off to start your shift. Promising Toby you'd call once you've been ungrounded.

Nate's face is grim as you approach the shop, you're starting to get used to the cold sweats from these dread bearing encounters. That can't be a good thing.

Did something happen last night? Were the Cowells targeted? Was everyone alright? These thoughts and more swam through your head as Nate motioned for you to follow him into the shop quickly.

He locked the door and pushed you into the back room. His hast doing nothing to settle your fraying nerves as you stumble past the threshold.

“That Rogers kid, how well do you know him?” his eyes dart around the back looking at every shadow as if watching their movements.

“Who's Roger?” you feel out of the loop.

Was Roger one of your assailants? Had the police already found suspects so soon on what little information you had to go on?

With a groan Nate smacked his hand against his face muttering something under his breath.

“Toby, Tobias Rogers how much do you know about him?” his tone is rushed and sharp.

You didn't even know his last name until now. But maybe you had heard it before but it never clicked with you. Honestly you've known each other for a month that's not very long at all. But maybe it's long enough to learn some things?

“...ah not much?”

There's a panicked look in Nate's eyes and he does his best to control his breathing. But it's clear that Nate is either about to hyperventilate or go into an anxiety attack. You wonder what's got him so worked up as he reached into his bag and pulls out a manila folder.

He hands it to you, you can see the water marks left by his sweaty palms.

What on Earth is going on?

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

A Familiar Soul - Chapter Two

Summary: Hilda decides to be completely honest with her mother, surprised when she seems to be a lot more in on magic than Hilda had expected her to be.

With her daughter’s association with witches, Johanna is forced to face some secrets of her own, bringing her back to feelings and people she’d rather have left behind

Dealing with insecurities and inner demons of her own, Kaisa finds herself face to face with the very issues that brought her to be so displeased with her own abilities

Or: the one where Johanna is Kaisa’s familiar

Notes:  Hey there! Just wanted to mention that Henrietta being the name for the tall witch from the Committee comes from @cinnamon-sparrow-scout! Hope you enjoy!

Read it on ao3: (chpt1) (chpt2)

Being in the library again after all those years was a strange feeling, to say the least, having avoided it like the plague ever since she was eighteen. Going to that place had always been the most surefire way to find her, which was the last thing she’d wanted to do. Unfortunately, that was exactly what Johanna had come for that day.

The scent of old books and the sounds of pages turning and patrons whispering were all familiar to her like a song she liked but hadn’t heard in a long time. Simultaneously unpleasant and nostalgic, those sensations made her feel like squirming, as if suddenly her skin was too tight. She kept herself composed and continued walking, though. There was a reason why she was there.

It didn’t take Johanna long to spot the librarian’s book cart between two shelves on the first floor, as if it had been put there to close the entrance to the small corridor the space between the shelves formed. It was a clear sign that Kaisa would be there, reshelving.

Johanna squared her shoulder, trying to make herself look braver than she felt. The part of the library they were in was secluded, which served her just fine. She rolled the cart forward to allow herself in and walked closer.

With her headphones on, it took Kaisa a moment to notice she had company. She turned her head to the other woman with a disapproving face, expecting to see a patron which hadn’t respected the ‘do not enter’ message that the cart positioned at the entrance gave. Now Johanna could see why that corridor would need to be closed for reshelving: the two shelves were so close that Kaisa was all but cornered by Johanna in the narrow corridor.

The librarian was good at masking her emotions, always had been. However, even if just for a second before she picked herself up, her eyes widened and her eyebrows shot upward at the sight of Johanna. Good, Johanna thought, I hope I gave the bastard a good fright.

“You need to stop this.” Johanna said with a resolution in her voice she didn’t really feel all the way in her soul. Already recomposed, Kaisa crossed her arms over her chest and deliberately lifted an eyebrow.

“Well, hello to you too.”

“I mean it.” Johanna walked closer, fully aware that she was being rude to someone she hadn’t talked to in so long. Seeing Kaisa again after so much time had gone by awakened something in her which made her want to cry, scream, and kiss her stupid face all at once. “Even you are better than this. Is this some sort of revenge? Trying to put my daughter in danger as well?”

Kaisa blinked, the confidence on her face wavering. In the few moments she’d had, she hadn’t even managed to recover from the shock of seeing Johanna again, a ghost of the past in the middle of her books, and now another blow was thrown at her.

“Daughter?” She asked, hating the disbelief in her voice.

“You know what I mean. You’ve been helping Hilda get herself in trouble, and what for? Getting back at me?”

“Oh, so Hilda is your daughter, is she?” The moments she’d spent with the girl were replayed in Kaisas’s mind, and with this added layer of knowledge, she could now see there had been something about the girl that had struck her as familiar. The irony of Hilda being Frida’s familiar did not escape her either; maybe it was something of a genetic trait? “Congratulations, I would never have guessed such a lovely girl would have been raised by you.”

With one firm step forward, Kaisa tried to squeeze herself between the shelf to her left and Johanna. She wanted that conversation to be over. It was too overwhelming for her to keep up her act of calm for much longer. No such luck, however, since Johanna slid herself to the right and blocked her way.

“You mean you didn’t know she was my daughter?” There was a hint of doubt in her voice when she asked. “Why do it, then? Get her involved with magic?”

“I do not spend nearly as much time thinking about you as you seem to think I do.” Kaisa huffed as she bumped on Johanna’s shoulder with her own, trying to get her to move so as to allow her out. “It’s not my fault she has a wild heart. I just hope she doesn’t let her selfish mother get in the way of what she loves.”

“Stay away from my child, Kaisa.” Johanna glared down into the witch’s eyes. “You know nothing about who I am, so keep my name out of your mouth.”

Kaisa met her gaze with as much intensity, all of Johanna’s anger reflected on her eyes. Johanna didn’t think they’d ever had this bad of an argument before. Even when they had fought, Johanna hadn’t been one to pick the battle. There was one difference this time, though, and it was that this time, Hilda was involved.

“You are a coward, Johanna. I see that still hasn’t changed.” She said with a smug grin that Johanna was dying to slap off of her face. Having no interest in facing charges for attacking the librarian, she instead walked away with an angry groan, feeling like it was much easier to breathe once she was out of that corridor.

With the confrontation over, she noticed her heart rate had picked up pace, and that her breathing was ragged. Thoughts scrambled in her head just like emotions in her heart. Kaisa had to somehow know Hilda was her daughter. She desperately wanted it to be true, because then there would be a reason why her daughter was always going on those crazy quests, why she hadn’t been telling her anything. Because then Johanna would finally be able to tell herself that Kaisa was indeed bad.

And yet, with one small, tragic exception, she knew her old friend was not a liar.

She walked quickly, taking big strides. Her crowded mind made it so she didn’t take much of her surroundings in, until another voice she hadn’t heard in years reached her. It was melodic and overly sweet, at least when she was calm, and Johanna turned her head to see the woman sitting on one of the more comfortable armchairs in the library.

“Johanna? Is that you?”

The woman’s long hair was split in the middle, one half of it orange and the other a creamy white. Johanna remembered that when she was a child, that hair used to remind her of a calico cat. Instead of her usual black dress, she was wearing another ankle lenghted dress, dark pink with a brown sweater on top. Something about seeing her out of her witch clothes made Johanna uncomfortable, or maybe it was just because of the encouter she’d just had.

“Abigail.” She greeted. “Yes, it’s me. Been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Oh, how much you’ve grown!” Abigail said, and Johanna had stop herself from saying she hadn’t aged at all. For some reason, Abigail looked surprised to see her there, and Johanna figured it was probably just because it had been a long time since they last saw each other, and not the best circumstances either.

The witch’s gaze was focused on a spot behind Johanna, and she glanced at it for long enough to realize Abigail was looking at where Johanna had just come from, where Kaisa, too, was now leaving from among the shelves.

“Pity, isn’t it?” Abigail said unprompted. “Such a promising witch, she’d been. And yet, she turned out to be so… self-centered.”

Johanna sighed, hugging her torso. “I agree. I once thought I knew her, you know. I cared about her, deeply. But now I’m afraid she doesn’t even deserve my compassion. I recently found out she had been endangering my child.”

Abigail brought a hand to her heart with a soft, almost inaudible gasp. “This upsets you, doesn’t it?” She asked in a low voice.

“Deeply. She’s… she’s doing to Hilda the same she did to herself. It’s happening right in front of my eyes, and I can allow it no longer.”

“You mean the blue haired girl?” Her head was tilted to the side. “Oh, I’ve seen the sort of thing she does with Kaisa’s support… they’re certainly not fit for a little girl. You are a good mother to try and protect her. I, too, shall see what I can do to try and keep her safe.”

Johanna let out a heavy sigh. Few things could stop Kaisa when she had something on her mind, and much less Hilda, but having an ally in the Committee of Three was something of a win. She knew very well about the power they had.

“Thank you, Abigail. It was good to see you again.”

“The pleasure was all mine, dear.”

The witch had barely finished speaking when a shrill hiss interrupted her.

“Abigail, what are you doing?”

Abigail turned to look behind herself, and Johanna noticed the voice, which she also recognized, was coming from a gap before two bookshelves that hadn’t been there before. Another one of the many secret passages the witches had.

“”Henrietta.” Abigail exhaled. “Must you be this way? I’m just talking.”

“With a non-witch!” The other woman snapped. From the gap, Johanna could only see her black clothes and hair split in half, the same colours as her younger sister’s.

“We can’t go our lives without talking to non-witches, you know?”

Henrietta glared at Abigail in a way that Johanna was sure had a meaning between them. Uncomfortably, she noted that they still talked about her as if she wasn’t in the room.

“Well, maybe we should. This place is witch sacred space! You shouldn’t be communing with them here!”

Before they could continue their argument, Johanna cleared her throat.

“I was already going anyway. Good evening.”

As she walked away from the library hastily, she wasn’t sure if in that visit she’d managed to solved her problems, or only to create more.

_#_#_#_

With her small hands, she placed the violets on the cold stone, one upon each grave. Kaisa didn’t like picking flowers. She knew it hurt the plant and often upset the nature spirits that took care of it. For her parents, though, she made an exception, and when she was allowed to visit them she’d always bring them a flower.

Their graves were side by side, just like they would want them to be. Kaisa remembered few things about her mother, because the woman had died when she wasn’t much more than a baby, but she’d heard stories about her. After she got pregnant and revealed that she had a non-witch lover, the witch community had been revolted. Heartbroken at not having her kind accept that romance, she’d decided to leave any affiliation with witch kind behind.

It was a noble decision, Kaisa thought, but not a very smart one. For her choice, she had her magic completely removed, and it made her terribly weak. Even though sometimes witches would take long to manifest their magic, they always had it in them, and taking it away was the same as cutting apart a piece of their soul. Her mother had gotten weaker and weaker, the harrowing experience of childbirth only making her situation worse, which eventually led to her death.

Without the woman he loved, Kaisa’s father hadn’t lasted long. He was with her for long enough for Kaisa to remember the sound of his laughter, which had always felt forced, the scent of the porrige he used to make them every morning, and to fill her young head with stories of how great her mother had been before she had her magic stripped from her simply for loving, how she’d been the most powerful and wise member of the Committee Of Three. Then, illness had taken him.

Her father had no parents in Trolberg, and her mother had no close family to speak of (none that hadn’t disowned her, anyway), so at a very young age Kaisa had been on the verge of being completely alone. Luckily, her mother had had one friend left, one woman who didn’t agree with the rest of the witches, and who had been kind enough to take Kaisa in.

“Come, little one.” Tildy said gently as she put a hand on the child’s shoulders. “Let’s go home.”

“Why don’t they come to visit me?” Kaisa asked suddenly, making the older woman involuntarily squeeze her shoulder. “Ghosts come to visit what was theirs, you said so yourself. But then why won’t they come visit me? Do they blame me for what happened?”

Tildy made her way to stand in front of her and kneeled down to her level. Age was beginning to make her movements less agile, but it wasn’t something that she ever allowed to stop her. Gazing into the girl’s big, melancholic eyes, she knew there was a long road ahead to get her to heal from the terrible experiences she’d had at such a young age. No child should have such a thought on their mind.

“Oh, sweetheart, of course they don’t blame you.” Resisting the urge to lock Kaisa in a tight hug, Tildy cooed. “You see, ghosts don’t usually come to visit people because… the thing with loved ones is, eventually they die too. And then everyone’s together again! It’s not because they don’t like you at all. They loved you so much, little one. You were a miracle in their eyes. I promise they’ll be looking at you with a lot of pride.”

Kaisa nodded. She didn’t look forward to dying, but at least she knew she’d see her parents again then. She knew what she had to do in this world, in the meanwhile.

The woman took her home again, and baked her her favorite cake, which she always did when she wanted to cheer her up. Kaisa was infinitely glad for Tildy’s warmth in her life, comforting and uplifting her. It was all she had. That, and the burning certainty in her soul that she had a debt to her mother which she had to pay.

She had to change the system that had gotten her killed, because even if Kaisa herself wasn’t the culprit of her death, she’d always feel responsible for her mother’s downfall if she didn’t do something. Kaisa would be great, she knew it. She would have to be if she wanted to make her mother proud.

[megastarstriker]

~{Unfortunate Events}~𝑨𝒛𝒊𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝒙 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓  𝒙 𝑪𝒓𝒐𝒘𝒍𝒆𝒚 ---------------------------------------------- 𝓟𝓡𝓞𝓛𝓞𝓖𝓤𝓔 •·················•·················•

=====================================

“Faithful Encounters”

   Part Two

< previous

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𝙋𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜: Aziraphale x reader x Crowley

𝙁𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙤𝙢: Good Omens

𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝘾𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩:??

𝙎𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮: She was just the new angel that day, only to be casted out on the spot, like a baby bird being thrown out of its nest to learn how to fly on its own against its will. She was an outcast and had no place or purpose there or even in the pits of fire. Now she finds herself reliving her traumatizing nightmare when she was child, as she counts the final days of the world’s demise as she plans ruining ‘The Lady Above’s Great Plan’.( I do not own Good Omens or its characters only the ones I create.)

𝑲𝒆𝒚𝒔 :

(Y/N) = Your Name

(S/C) = Skin Color

(B/T) = Body Type

(H/C) = Hair Color

(H/L) = Hair Length

(H/S) = Hair Style

(Y/A) = Your Accent

(F/C) = Favorite Clothing

=============================================================

TOM HIDDLESTON  as 𝘼𝙯𝙖𝙯𝙚𝙡

I walked down briskly as I looked at my watch.

“No way in hell that was Crowley”, I whispered to myself harshly hoping no one could hear me, as I walked through the crowded streets.

‘But then again he was literally from hell’ I thought with quite the reasoning but shook my head from those silly thoughts, and kept walking until I saw the Ritz.

‘Seriously what are the chances I was gonna meet Aziraphale as well’, I thought with a nervous chuckle,’ I’m pretty sure its very low and if it were to happen it will be from complete coincidence. Besides as far as I know, does not leave his bookshop on busy days and this day is no exception from that.’

I then opened the door to the Ritz and looked around to see if a spotted a certain friend of mine and surely enough from all of the people that were either talking, chattering , simply sitting in a calm fashion there was only one of the rest that had there arm raising as they waved excitedly at me in a likely childish way.

Almighty, I thought with a sigh as I walked towards the smiling lady at her table.

“Hey, (Y/N)”, she said in a cheery voice as she welcomed me.

“Hello, Elizabeth how are you doing?”, I asked a bit bored yet happy tone to see her.

“Good, well don’t just stand there have a seat!”, She said as she gestured to the seat across from her as I gladly made myself comfortable,” I’m so glad to see you didn’t keep me waiting like the last time.”

“Well, I was planning on doing it again, but I rather prefer this side of yours than the other as much as I hate to admit it.”, I replied with smirk as 

“You are such a meanie you know that”, She replied with playful expression as she slapped my hand lightly.

“Only when I want to, of course.”, I replied with a small chuckle as I fixed my seat,” So what was this ’Oh So important gossiping thing’ you had to tell me anyways, that you apparently dragged me here for.”

“Well, if you’re insisting then I guess I should tell you”, She replies,” Anyways..”

After we ordered our food and waited ,a whole 20 minutes passed of her telling me how her day was, she then started to ask me how was my day.

“Oh nothing really”, I said trying to keep my face neutral but failed as I lied.

“Oh Big Bullocks, tell me because from the looks of that face you’re making it seems you saw something interesting all right and I wanna know.”, She replied clearly not buying my lie for a minute.

“I sort of ran into a guy ,an old friend of mine, who I was very close friends with-”, I responded midsentence but was cut off by her to continue.

“You what?!”, She said her eyes wide as saucers with a excited grin as she misinterpreted what I just said,”(Y/N) do you know what this means, what you just said?”

“Um, sort of... I”, I responded in confusion as my eyes squinted at her slightly.

“You are in love!”, She said as she smiled widely and squealed like nails on a chalkboard.

Catching on to what she was saying I immediately declined.

“Oh no no its nothing like that, believe me your getting way ahead of yourself,” I responded in a bland expression as I tried to hide meekly blush appearing on my cheeks.

“Of course it is, you’re only making it more obvious by denying it you know”, She replied trying to pry out the information out of me.

“No there isn’t any love indication with him and I’m sure of it. I’m serious”, I replied trying to think of a way to change the subject.

I then spotted the food tray on our table.

“Oh wow would you look at that the food has arrived!”, I said in a cheerful tone as I thanked the waiter for bringing our food.

“Mark my words, (Y/N) (L/N) I will find out your secret, you so cravingly hide.”, She said as she pointed the spoon at me as she squinted her eyes at me.

“Speaking of cravings. Let’s eat.” I said suddenly successfully changing the subject.

After we finished eating and payed for our delicious food, we headed outside for a walk.

“So were would you like to go?”, I asked her as I walked beside her.

“Well there is this bookshop, I’ve been wanting to go to, maybe look at some books.”, She said thinking out loud as she paced through her mind,” It’s a few blocks away I believe if I’m correct.”

“Well, I’ll go if you go. Lead the way”, I said as I followed her 

It took us a few moments to get there but when we did reach the bookshop I couldn’t help but have the feeling I’ve seen this before.

“A.Z. Fell & Co. Bookshop”, I read as I looked at the sign, the store’s outward appearance was a bright red and had two signs one that said ‘OPEN’ and other had an Opening hours that was surprisingly and oddly long. It read:

Bookshop Opening Hours

"I open the shop on most weekdays about 9:30 AM. perhaps 10AM. While occasionally I open the shop as early as 8, I have been known not to open until 1. Except on Tuesday. I tend to close about 3:30 PM, or earlier if something needs tending to. However, I might occasionally keep the shop open until 8 or 9 at night, you never know when you might need some night reading. On days that I am not in, the shop will remain closed. On weekends, I will open the shop during normal hours unless I am elsewhere. Bank Mondays will be treated in the usual fashion, with early closing on Wednesdays, or sometimes Fridays.

(For Sundays see Tuesdays)

A. Z. Fell, Bookseller"

“Well from the looks of it it’s opened,” I said as I ignored the long opening hour sign in front of me as it was far too tiring to read,” After you.”

I opened the door for my friend while I followed behind her as the door closed causing a ‘ding’ of a bell to sound on the shop, alerting that someone had entered.

I awed in amazement as I saw the bountiful of books in the shelves, 

‘This place looked stunning, even more than my library at home’ I thought as I scanned the bookshelves that held many marvelous and classical books.

“Oh no! I have to leave”, I heard Elizabeth say in panic,  As she looked at her watch with wide eyes,” I’ll get fired if I don’t hurry, I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for long.”

“It’s Okay, besides we’ll meet some other time”, I said giving her a small smile.

“Thank You for understanding”, She said giving me a small smile of her own,” Well, I’m off. Bring me a book as well!”

Just like that, she left the shop leaving me and the peaceful silence to myself. I went back to scanning the room in the shop and the books.

I came across a bookshelf and started dragging my fingers across the books embroidered and well- defined spines. I came across one that read “To Kill a Mockingbird A Novel by Harper Lee.”

As I was about to take the precious book from the shelf I heard a clear cough from someone behind, causing me to flinch and startling me as I backed away causing my back to hit something as I felt it touch my shoulder very delicately but the. As I was about to take the precious book from the shelf  

“U-Umm Excuse me, sorry to inter-”, I heard a voice say behind me, after it cleared its throat awkwardly.

Startling me, I jumped and backed away causing my back to hit something as I felt it touch my shoulders very delicately but then disappear as I heard footsteps back away from behind me. 

“Oh Dear, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” The masculine voice said in a soft tone.

I then turned around quickly locking eyes with two bright and beautiful ocean ones. The man—I had now confirmed—seemed to fit right in with the rest of the shop. His clothes had a very vintage feel to them, and although it was highly unlikely, something in myself told me that they were all original. He was not terribly tall, but he wasn’t short, either. He had such a kind face, that was currently frowning in embarrassment. All of this was topped off by some extremely blond curls—so blond in fact that they may as well have been white. Although he would not be considered particularly handsome by most estimates, something about him was drawing me to him like bread to butter.  the person did had some gained weight on him that had stood out very adorably with his nifty pastel suit and brown shoes that perfectly matched his cute little white bow tie on his neck. There was this sense of peaceful aura circulating around in a radiating way when I was near him. There was no denying in my mind that this person looked oh so gorgeous and undoubtedly out of a masterpiece painting. Purity and dainty was marked and sculptured in his beauty like an angel with perfection. Exactly like an angel. No, He was an angel. It was Aziraphale without a doubt in mind.

“You just looked so happy and so focused, I just thought it would be rude and no good manner of mine to interrupt your concentration.”, He said as he looked down in a meek and shy manner a nervous smile planted on his plump rosy lips.

“U-Um no worries...its Okay”, I started to say in a stammer, as I felt my cheeks burn in embarrassment as I stared at him. ’Why am I stammering’ I thought in my head as I have never had occurred to have done this before.

“Oh really, well that’s good to hear, Crowley said that I had a tendency of sneaking up on people.”, Aziraphale said a hint of relief in his voice and with heart-warming smile along with chuckle.

I laughed as well feeling my heart skipped a beat and beating out of my chest repeatedly as if the sound I just heard was the most perfect sound ever created. ’Seriously what’s going on with me’ I thought in my mind thinking I was probably sick or coming down with something

“Good Heaven’s, where are my manners? I’m Aziraphale and the current owner of this shop. And you are miss...?”, He said as he held out his hand in a welcome fashion

“Mrs. (L/N), but my friends call me (Y/N) and its an honor to be standing in your bookshop”, I replied as I shook his warm hand gently in mine. 

“Oh, Thank You and its great to meet your acquaintance...”, He said with a happy grin on his face as he shook my hand happily.

“Have you come to purchase a book here by any chance.”, He asked as he let go of my hand and put both of them behind his back, his face changing in a neutral expression,” Because if you were so happened to be here for that matter, I’m afraid it’s closed.”

“Well, I- Um, had a friend who so happened that wanted to come here, but she left moments ago and I’m afraid she won’t come later,” I explained in a nice manner,” We were planning on looking about around your shop and see what books you had in here, and maybe buy one not completely sure. You see this is our first time at your bookshop. The sign outside said it was “OPEN” if I remembered.”

“Oh I must of forgotten to turn the sign at the door! I can be really so forgetful at times,” Aziraphale said in realization with a hint of horror, then his face was wearing a small smile that was adorned prettily with his rosy cheeks as he rambled with excitement, ”Well then, my dearest of welcome to you and U-Um you are free to look around the shelves in the shop and pick your book, you can also come to me if you have any trouble if you’d like or need any assistance in picking one, of course there’s that one-- Oh goodness me ”

“Well now that you mention it, I actually don’t even know what book to look for, I hope it wouldn’t be a bother if I could ask for some help from you, Aziraphale?”, I replied as I smiled slightly at him saying his name in a soft tone.

He looked at me with those captivating eyes of his and hastily replied, ”N-no it wouldn’t be at all, on the contrary I actually enjoy helping people and its my job, especially with finding a good book to read. I like reading myself, you see and in terms of working here I pretty much know all of these books from top to bottom. You never know when someone needs a good night reading or any literature for that matter. ”

“Wow you mean, you work here all by yourself and do everything around here.” I said in complete amazement as I looked at this person with utter most respect as I followed him at his side.

“Y-yes I do in fact, but its never a bother for me ,really. It keeps me more motivated to do things around and it keeps me busy, despite how hard it is. It does get quite lonely here, but the silence hear is lovely and perfect for reading-- I’m rambling again aren’t I? ”

“Oh its okay ramble away if you have to, its quite entertaining. You weren’t joking about the shop being quiet though,” I said as I let out a joyful chuckle, trailing behind him.

“You are too nice and yes it is quiet indeed”, He agreed as he laughed along, he then went and carried a big stack of books towards, ”I’ll be back, once I’m done organizing these over on that shelf”

The books looked pretty heavy and there where piled no more higher than him and it worried me that it was going to fall as it wiggled and the carrier holding the mount of books was having a lot of trouble.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help with that?”, I asked with concern as I watched him trying to look were he was going by peeking slightly at the front of the pile of assorted books.

“Uh No no need, Dear. Just having a bit of trouble carrying them that’s all, they are quite heavy.”, He said with a bashful chuckle as he kept walking towards a hallway his lips forming sounds of struggle.

Not buying a bit of his excuse, I decided to take it upon myself to follow him and as I stood in front of his view, grabbed half of the stacks that were above the pile as many as I could until I had the same amount of books in Aziraphale’s hands. Startled and now being able to see clearly as there were no more little than 7 or 6 books in his hands, he looked at me shocked and with softness in his eyes.

“You do know it’s okay, to ask for help, Right?”, I said with a smile, as I carried the pile of books in my hands.

“O-of course ....Thank You”, He said as he looked at me with slightly wide eyes in pure shock, a hint of shyness in his voice.

“Your welcome”, I replied with a small grin.

A few hours passed as I helped Aziraphale with sorting his books on the shelves, and he talked about many things and books as well as I did, the only sound in the shop was the clock ticking by. But as we did there was something that has been bothering me since we first talked. ‘Why didn’t he remember’, I thought with worry.

‘It has been many years since I’ve seen him so maybe it wouldn’t have really jogged his memory for me to appear, but then again I did kind of expected him to at least remember me’ I thought quite angrily yet understanding as I thought of  the angel,’ Couldn’t really blame him though with upstairs and all of that involved it wouldn’t surprise me for him to forget me, too many years of paperwork I guess. Shouldn’t that be a good thing though? I mean for all I know as much as an angel of a principality he is and may seem he could be working with heaven to execute me and he is danger to me if it does seem that way.

 “Well, now that the books are in there proper places”, Aziraphale said as he looked at the books he had just stocked with glee,” I’m ready to help you with finding the perfect book for you. So what do you like to read in your spare time?”

“Mostly about Paris or anything really that captures my attention, but to save your time after sorting all those books with me...,” I said as I paused for a moment to look at the bookshelf and analyzing each book, then later spotting one that caught my curious eye,” Aha! This one.”

I took it out and the embellished cover read, “Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.” 

“Hmm its seems like a good read and exactly what I’m looking for”, I said as I pondered, looking at it for a moment,” Is it okay if I just borrow it?”

“I can tell and know how much these books mean to you, and besides I already have a library of my own at home. I do keep promises, when I say that I will return it as soon as I have finished it.”, I added knowing fully well why he seemed hesitant to reply to my question on borrowing the book.

“Well you did help and I appreciate it a bunch. As a matter a fact you can keep it,” He said almost a bit hesitant, but nonetheless very kindly and with a small smile, ”As a gift for helping me and all.”

“I couldn’t, I only helped because I wanted to not for something in return. I really can’t accept this”, I replied as I stubbornly declined his generous and absolutely kind offering.

“It’s a gift between friends”, He said softly as he looked at me,” I enjoyed your company very much, and It would make me very happy if you would accept it. I have an extra copy of that same book anyways”

Geez he really is an angel. He really lives the name up to its potential and meaning.

“Okay, but I’ll only accept it if you agree to let me help you around if you need any.”, I said as I held the book tightly in my hand,” and to let me come to your shop every once in a while. If you’ll let me that is?.”

“Since you insist, Of course and you are welcome to my shop whenever you can.”, He said in a friendly manner as he kept that smile on his face.

“Is it okay if I can read it in here for a while?”, I asked him half-wishing and half-hoping he would say yes,” That’s if you are fine with it.”

“There isn’t that many customers coming in today and I was about to sit down and catch up on my daily reading as well. Of course you can stay”, He responded with a glowing and beaming grin as he went to put on his reading glasses that looked very good on him.

“Thank You,” I said as my heart beat in excitement and with happiness mixed together.

“No need for that, I actually enjoy your company very much,” He responded waving off my “thanks”,” I’m afraid, its not every day you get to enjoy a nice book with someone else who likes them as much as I do. Glad to see, that I could share it with you.”

 “Would you like some tea?”, He asked me as he carried a tray with two cups.

“Oh yes. Thank you very much,” I replied as I took the cup he had placed in the small table in front of me.

I then remembered something important that I had to do today and quickly declined as I made up an excuse.

“Um, now that you mention it I can’t stay...”, I replied in a hurry as I rambled in explanation with embarrassment,” I had this thing going on  that I left at home and should be waiting for me ...”

“Oh really?”, He said in a surprised tone at my sudden outburst.

“Yes and I better get going, so have a nice and wonderful day.”, I said as I hurried for the door outside, before the man outside could open it. As I heard Aziraphale say ‘Come Again!’ behind me. I replied with a “Will do!” as the door to the shop closed swiftly behind me. Feeling blue and guilt for the angel I so much adored for not staying, as I thought of a way to repay him. I  sat down on a abandoned bench with no people walking in plain sight. I then grabbed my “Divine Comedy” book I had in my coat and looking sideways I mentally miracled some sticky note out of thin air with a pen and with my best calligraphy writing, I wrote:

“���𝓮𝓪𝓻 𝓐𝔃𝓲𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝓪𝓵𝓮,

𝐼'𝓂 𝓈𝑜𝓇𝓇𝓎 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓇𝓊𝓃𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝑜𝒻𝒻 𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓁𝒾𝑒𝓇 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝓉𝑒𝓁𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓎𝑜𝓊, 𝐼 𝒽𝑜𝓅𝑒 𝒾𝓉 𝒹𝒾𝒹𝓃'𝓉 𝒹𝒾𝓈𝓅𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓈𝑒𝒹 𝑜𝓇 𝑜𝒻𝒻𝑒𝓃𝒹𝑒𝒹 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒾𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝓎 𝓌𝒶𝓎. 𝐼 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓈𝒶𝓎 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝐼 𝒽𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝑒𝓃𝒿𝑜𝓎𝑒𝒹 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝒸𝑜𝓂𝓅𝒶𝓃𝓎 𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓎 𝓂𝓊𝒸𝒽 𝓉𝑜𝑜 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒶 𝓌𝑜𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇𝒻𝓊𝓁 𝓂𝒾𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓁𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝒽𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝓂𝑒𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓂𝓎 𝒻𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓃𝒹. 𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓉'𝓈 𝓌𝒽𝓎 𝐼 𝓌𝑜𝓊𝓁𝒹 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓂𝒶𝓀𝑒 𝒾𝓉 𝓊𝓅 𝓉𝑜 𝓎𝑜𝓊, 𝒷𝓎 𝑔𝑜𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓁𝓊𝓃𝒸𝒽 𝓉𝑜𝓂𝑜𝓇𝓇𝑜𝓌  𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓅𝓁𝒶𝒸𝑒 𝒾𝓈 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓅𝒾𝒸𝓀 𝓉𝑜 𝒸𝒽𝑜𝑜𝓈𝑒, 𝒾𝒻 𝓎𝑜𝓊'𝒹 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓃𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝒻𝓇𝑒

𝐿𝑒𝓉'𝓈 𝒽𝑜𝓅𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓈𝑒𝑒 𝑒𝒶𝒸𝒽 𝑜𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝒶𝑔𝒶𝒾𝓃

𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝐵𝓁𝑒𝓈𝓈𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈,

               (𝒴/𝒩) (𝐿/𝒩)

𝓟.𝓢. 𝐼 𝓃𝑜𝓉𝒾𝒸𝑒𝒹 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒹𝒾𝒹𝓃'𝓉 𝒽𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒷𝑜𝑜𝓀 𝒾𝓃 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓅. 𝐻𝑜𝓅𝑒 𝒾𝓉 𝒾𝓈 𝓉𝑜 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔!”

I then put the cap on the pen and laid it down beside me. Taking out the written sticky note, I paste it on the front of the book’s cover and  miracled it to the shop with a snap of my fingers. I then grabbed the pen and sticky note box as I placed them neatly in the pockets of my coats. Whistling a tune, I couldn’t ignore the growing happy grin on my face, as my heart grew wings and did a happy dance as I would if I was alone and not in the public streets.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

{Nighttime}

I walked in a brisk pace as my feet hit the pavement on the ground as I made my long walk, As I approached my home and opened it. I then closed it and just when I did, I saw a silhouette of a man sitting in my chair in the moonlight as everything surrounding him was painted dark and pitch black.

“Home sweet Home”, The demon, Azazel said in a bored and mysterious tone as he looked at me with his piercing eyes, with a glint of curiosity behind it,”(Y/N)”

“What are you doing in my home?!” I asked startled and angry as I grabbed the vase next to me,” How many more times do I have to tell you to leave me alone before I resort to violence.”

“No hello? How nice of you. Well then, all greetings aside,” The demon said as it  approached quietly with each footstep, only to see  clearly as it stood in the light’s view, the demon looked and dressed decently in his black coat that he wore with his tie, hands clasped together behind his back and long black hair slicked back as he looked at me with a bored face,” I’m here to talk about business. I believe you know what I’m talking about.”

As I heard a thunder clap from outside, the pitter-pattering of rain resounding outside as it fell, covering the windows like a cascade or waterfall, I looked at the man in front of me with fury and disgust.

“Yes quite frankly, and no I’m not joining your side if that’s what you are offering. Neither you or them for that matter”, I said in irritation as I looked at the demon with a glare as I tried my best to be polite in the most hateful way as I pointed up and down to signify ‘Heaven and Hell’, I then pointed towards the door that leads to the outside,” There is the door, so you can show yourself off now.”

“Yes I know and I’m afraid, I won’t be doing that.”, He said with a dead and irritated tone obviously not bothered by my way of speaking,” I didn’t came here for that, I came because my Highness has sent a message for you.”

He then took something from his pocket and there was a letter with the name “Lucifer” burnt and imprinted on the front of the envelope with seal symbol of a pentagram.

“I don’t want his bribing or anything from him. I’m not some product or weapon to be bought with or to mess around ”, I said in a stern strict voice not wanting anything to with the demon or his poor excuse of his so called Highness, Lucifer, as I kept a confident posture, and not taking the envelope or so as to touch it whatsoever from his hands.

“It is not my place to say this, but the sooner you cut this weak and rubbish act of bravery and join our side, the easier it is for the both of us and this war,” He responded as he put the letter on the table,” In the end you don’t really have much of a choice, anyways.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”, I asked in anger and irritation in my voice as I stood still in my spot in front of him somehow confused with what he said.

He then walked past me towards the door rudely, and not answering my question as he turn the doorknob and left not caring for the rain that pouring down from the star covered night sky, I followed after him in frustration as I yelled at him,” Answer me!”

“Oh I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise of the ‘Great Plan’, you’ll soon see yourself,” He responded as he stopped dead in his tracks, his back turned and facing me as drops of rain covered his body. He then turned his head towards me and said the sentence that I feared the most with a devilish-eating grin,” After All,......”

“𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝐸𝓃𝒹 𝒾𝓈 𝒩𝒾𝑔𝒽”

=======================================================

{So what did you guys think?

I made Tom Hiddleston as my character Azazel because he fit the characteristics pretty well as he did for Loki. 

I hope you liked it 

and stay tuned for the next chapter}

[misssophiachase]

For KC Bingo @klaroline-events - “Throne”

He’s a Prince hiding out from a pending arranged engagement in downtown NYC and she’s a school teacher minding her own business. On FF and AO3

Art Imitating Life

St John Atelier: Soho (Manhattan) New York City, NY

“Please tell me Rebekah doesn’t know your whereabouts?”

“That’s really the first thing you’re going to say after I’ve travelled 3,500 miles to visit. I know my younger sister scares you but...”

“She doesn’t scare me, well not that much,” he mumbled. “Did I mention how good it is to see you, Niklaus?”

Klaus had barely stopped to think before hastily packing his belongings, offering a feeble excuse and boarding a private flight to the United States. First stop, Enzo St John’s Atelier in downtown Manhattan. 

Klaus had met Enzo in Paris where they both studied art at the Sorbonne ten years earlier. They had immediately hit it off and formed a solid friendship that transcended many different time zones over the years. 

Enzo moved to New York three earlier to start his own art school and gallery. He wanted to support and promote local and upcoming artists who couldn’t afford to do so themselves. Klaus had championed his friend’s endeavours over the years and wished he had the freedom to pursue something similar. 

Unfortunately, the Prince of England had other more pressing priorities.  

“Better late than never I suppose,” he muttered. “I hope you don’t mind putting me up for a few weeks?”

“How about I stay in the Royal Suite at the Waldorf Astoria, that your aides have no doubt already booked, and you can stay at my lowly loft in Tribeca?”

“Always about you, isn’t it, Lorenzo?”

“Well, when you’re the best friend to a Prince it seems fair,” he teased. “So, can I ask why you’ve decided to show up unannounced at my atelier? And might I also add, where is your usually extensive entourage? I may be fit but not enough to protect you from out of control females throwing their panties at you on the street.”

“You really love the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” He joked before answering one question at a time. “Vacation to avoid my upcoming, arranged engagement. They are in England but I have two bodyguards Scotland Yard insisted upon and my life isn’t a Tom Jones concert, there is absolutely no throwing of undergarments just FYI.”

“Damn, I always hoped there’d be panties.”

“Nice to see nothing ever changes with you,” he chuckled. “And if I didn’t mention it earlier, Rebekah sends her kindest regards.”

“I’ll bet she does,” he smirked knowingly. “Your sister really can’t get enough of me. Now, how about we get a drink and discuss this engagement? I’m assuming I'm the best man and have approval over all bridesmaids?”

“How about we drink here?”

“Worried about those panties, hey?”

“You know me too well. Let’s just say I’m keeping a low profile,” he murmured, tapping his New York Yankees hat. “Also, I seem to recall a bloody expensive bottle of single malt, top shelf whiskey I sent over for your birthday.”

“Do you really think I’d save that? Although, I do have a less expensive bottle of middle shelf whiskey, Your Highness.” 

“I suppose that will have to do.” 

2 seconds later

“I don’t understand why you can’t tell Esther and Mikael that it’s the twenty-first century and you’re far too old to be beholden to such an outdated practice like an arranged marriage.” 

“You’ve met my parents,” Klaus growled. “Their greatest joy in life is to make me do something I don’t want to do and after Finn decided to elope with a questionable commoner and Elijah entered the priesthood, they’re worried I’m going to do something similar.”

“So, what you’re really telling me is that they’re more worried that, if you go rogue, Kol will be the only hope of carrying on the family tradition and it scares the bejeezus out of them?”

“Exactly.” Enzo didn’t respond immediately, just let out a knowing laugh. “So, you see my eternal dilemma.”

“Tell me with the impending nuptials you’ve at least met your bride-to-be for more than five minutes?”

“It’s rather difficult when she lives in Bulgaria,” he replied. “Tatia Petrova is beautiful, that much I know, but other than that we have nothing in common.”

“Now I know what this is about,” Enzo grinned. “You sly dog, you’ve come to the states to find yourself an alternative wife.”

“An alternative wife? Someone has clearly been watching too many of those romantic comedy movies.”

“It’s called a rom-com, Your Royal Highness, and one of the most popular movie genres.”

 “Well, whatever they are, I am doing no such thing. Also, never call me that, it always seems so tawdry when you utter it. If you must know I needed a break from all the pressure, some time to unwind and pretend I’m not a Prince and have a life of my own.”

“Sounds just like the plot from a rom-com” he teased. “All we need is a strong, intelligent, independent, beautiful and slightly feisty woman to come into the atelier and sweep an unhappy Prince off his feet.”

“Do you ever think you’re working in the wrong industry?”

“So, what exactly did you tell Esther and Mikael you were doing?” He asked, choosing not to respond to his smart comeback. “They know from experience that I’m an incredibly bad influence over you, Niklaus.”

“Exactly why they have no idea I’m with you.”

“You lied to the Queen? Wow, I don’t want to be around when she catches you out and she will because, if you hadn’t noticed, everyone knows who and what you are.”

“I said I was going to a world-class meditation retreat in Sedona to relax before the big announcement.”

“So, not only does she think you’ve taken up meditation, she thinks you’re in Arizona and not with yours truly in New York?”

“That’s about the gist of it,” he replied simply. “So, I was thinking it might be best to stay indoors, order copious amounts of Uber Eats and paint so I don’t draw attention to myself. I’ll only burden you for a couple of weeks, Lorenzo.”  

“Do you even know how to order UberEats?” Klaus rolled his eyes by way of response. “Wow, that’s my idea of a wild vacation, Niklaus,” he sighed. “Fine, I’ll keep your secret if you insist. But if the Queen finds out and tries to behead me, I am counting on you to organise a speedy pardon.”

2 days later

Klaus rolled out of bed trying to block out the invading sunlight peeking through the crack in the curtains.

Enzo had kindly offered Klaus his large loft on the top story of the atelier he used to store paintings. A passionate art fan, Klaus couldn’t think of a better place to spend his next two weeks. 

He stumbled down the stairs and toward the small kitchenette on the floor below. Being half asleep and struggling with jet lag he didn’t bother to dress. The area was completely off limits to the public and Klaus figured his fitted, grey boxers would suffice in order to get his much-needed caffeine fix.

“Don’t come any closer, I have mace,” a voice warned. Klaus looked up, not expecting an extremely attractive blonde to be there rifling through her handbag. No doubt attempting to find said mace but, by the looks of it, failing miserably. Klaus was tempted to lecture her about carrying around so much junk, as Rebekah tended to do, but thought better of it.

“Hold on,” he murmured, finally finding his voice. “Why are you trying to attack me, last time I checked you’re the one breaking and entering.”

“And last time I checked, you’re not Enzo.” Her expressive, blue eyes ventured lower and Klaus was fairly certain she liked what she saw.

“What gave it away, love?”

“That arrogant self-assurance for starters.”

“Are we talking about the same guy?”

“I know what you’re doing,” she growled wearily.

“And what exactly am I doing, well you know besides trying to fulfil my caffeine fix to ward off this horrible case of jet lag.”

“You forgot to add barely dressed,” she shot back, as a slight blush crossed her cheeks. “No, you are trying to distract me so I don’t mace your ass.”

“And here I thought mace was meant for the face, you Americans are funny creatures. I’m staying here, love, no need to attack me, especially this early in the day.”

“It’s lunchtime,” she huffed.

“Really? It feels so much earlier. Now, maybe I should be the one asking the questions since you are encroaching on my space.”

“Glad to see you’re making friends,” Enzo interrupted. “As the welcoming committee you could have at least thrown on a shirt.”

“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” he hissed. “In fact, she broke in here and threatened to, and I quote, ‘mace my ass.’”

“Why do you have a conceited, half dressed, smart ass in your attic, Enzo?”

“Tell me what you really think, sweetheart,” he chuckled. Klaus thought she was beautiful but her feisty and unapologetic charm was an unexpected and not wholly unwelcome surprise.

“Okay, children,” he chided. “Kl..” Klaus gave him a knowing look, he was supposed to be undercover after all.

“Caroline Forbes this is an old friend from England, although I use the word friend sparingly, uh James.”

“What? Just James? Like Madonna or Cher?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you ask too many questions, Caroline?”

“Says the guy half dressed.”

“You seem incredibly distracted by that fact, love.”

“I have no idea what’s going on here and to be honest don’t really want to know,” Enzo groaned. “But Caroline is one of my students and does a few errands around the place, hence why she has a key.”

“Oh, so you two are...” Klaus trailed off, gesturing between them.

“No!”

“Ew, yuck.”

“Gee thanks, darling, give a guy a complex. We’re friends, well except when she says things like that, it has been since Care Bear demanded I share my artistic gifts with her and I was kind enough to oblige.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly how it went,” she drawled, rolling her eyes for extra effect. Klaus couldn’t stop thinking just how adorable she looked doing it. “I teach at the local public school and given the complete lack of funding for an art program Enzo offered his atelier for weekly classes. Turns out it wasn’t just the children interested in learning.”

“Who knew you had a heart, Lorenzo?”

“And who knew you had a freckle right above…”

“How about I go get dressed? Will that make you both happy?”

“Well, I’m bringing kids here in two hours so I think that might be a good idea,” she replied, a slight smile tugging at the edges of those pink lips.  Klaus didn’t respond just shook his head as he took the stairs one-by-one, his caffeine fix a long and distant memory.

2 hours later

Caroline Forbes wasn’t the kind of person to get distracted, in fact she liked to think that her ability to focus was second-to-none. Well, that was until two hours earlier when a shirt-less, English Adonis decided to interrupt her daily routine.

He was clearly a big fan of himself. overly opinionated and frustratingly cocky but Caroline couldn’t stop imagining what it would be like to do more than look at his partially naked body.

Yes, maybe it had been too long, as Katherine would say, but those crimson lips curved into a knowing smile, those disarming dimples and those messy, blonde curls she wanted to run her hands through were flashing through her mind with no sign of stopping.

“Miss Forbes,” she was broken from her thoughts by someone tugging on her dress. “I need to go bathroom.”

They’d arrived at the atelier not long ago. Her class, excited to see Enzo, were milling around the room but her attention was on something else. Or someone else.

Caroline figured he probably had better things to do like sight see but she really didn’t know much about him at the end of the day. She didn’t even know his last name.

There was something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on either, he seemed so familiar, like she knew him from somewhere, which was crazy. Well, she kept telling herself that.

“Okay, Hudson,” she said, “let’s go to the bathroom.” Hudson always needed to go to the bathroom so Caroline wasn’t altogether surprised. As they made their way down the long corridor, she took in the walls filled with art not paying much attention to where she was going and running straight into something. Or someone.

“Oh, I’m so sorry…” Before she could finish her apology she saw his smirk. It was the kind of smirk that screamed you ran into me on purpose.

Bastard.

“Well, that tends to happen when you’re not looking where you’re going.” His smirk only grew wider at that point.

“I’d say it was a pleasure but I’d be lying,” she shot back, that same feeling of familiarity returning. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like someone?”

 “Well, we all look like someone,” he answered, his awkward pause not lost on Caroline. “And who is this? A friend of yours?”

“I’m Hudson and I really need to pee.” Caroline watched the discomfort cross his face and couldn’t help but gloat inwardly. That would teach him for smirking at her like that.

She sent him her best counter smirk and ushered her mini companion to the nearby bathroom. At least he was clothed this time but why did he have to smell so damn good?

What she wasn’t expecting was for him to be taking part in the class when she returned with Hudson in tow. It was like he was doing it to frustrate her and it was working. 

“I set you up here,” he smiled, gesturing to the easel. 

“Oh, I don’t paint during this class,” she stumbled. Caroline loved to draw but only when she was alone and not surrounded by seventeen sets of prying eyes. As a teacher, Caroline knew full well that kids could be the worst critics. 

“You should, I can help out with your class if you like?” His blue eyes were gazing into hers now, imploring, pleading almost. What was this guy doing to her? “Or we can share?”

“You don’t want to share with him, Miss, he’s got boy germs,” Lucy cried out from across the room. Trust her children to make an awkward moment more awkward.

“I wouldn’t want you to be subjected to my boy germs, love,” he smiled, his mouth dipping low so he could murmur it in her ear.

“Am I interrupting you two?” Enzo asked, clearly amused by the situation. “Do I need to punish you both because I will.”

“Not at all, Mister St John,” he mimicked, placing a paintbrush in her hand gently. Caroline was struggling to breathe now and not just because of his close proximity but the way his hand grazed hers. 

“Miss Forbes and the teacher sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” Chanting broke out from the corner of the room and she knew it had to be Claudia, Sienna and Scarlett leading the chorus. 

“Ew, gross! Girl germs!” That was Liam, Cory and Jack attempting to drown them out. 

“You are unbelievable,” she muttered under her breath, just loud enough for him to hear. 

“You really need to stop complimenting me so much, Caroline.” She was trying to ignore just how good her name sounded rolling off his tongue but was struggling to say the least. 

“For embarrassing me in front of my students you will pay, mark my words.” He didn’t respond just laughed. 

Class passed relatively quickly with only a few more interesting observations from her kids. Caroline found herself enjoying his company, not that she’d admit it.         

It was after she’d left the atelier and finished classes for the day that Caroline began to revisit those niggling thoughts at the back of her mind. The ones that kept reminding her just how familiar he looked. 

Then it came to her.

2 hours later

“I really should have suspected something, given that pathetic introduction. I mean besides celebrities who really goes by one name?”

“Excuse me?” He asked. Klaus had been minding his business, sitting by the window and nursing a cup of tea. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since she left with her class and now here she was. “Does Lorenzo know just how much you use his key?”

“Stop changing the subject, Your Highness.”

“Oh, I see,” he murmured knowingly. Klaus would be lying if he wasn’t a little disappointed his cover had been blown. He was enjoying being around her and conversing like two normal people and then she had to throw in those two dreaded words. “You don’t need to call me that. Between you and me I actually preferred conceited, half dressed, smart ass.”

“So do I,” she grinned. 

“Please tell me this isn’t going to change things between us because I happen to like those adorable eye rolls and steady stream of choice insults.”

“As long as the fact that I threatened the Prince of England doesn’t come with any kind of serious punishment.”

“Well to be honest, Caroline, I don’t think anyone would believe me if I said you threatened to ‘mace my ass’ between you and me.”

“You’re being awfully cocky for someone who finds himself in a precarious position.”

“And what position might that be?”

“Well, I could blow your cover, tell everyone the Prince of England is hiding out in an atelier in downtown Manhattan.” 

“Well, you could but I don’t think you will,” he murmured. 

“Well, you did embarrass me in a room full of my students, they may be young but that doesn’t mean they are not going to hold this over me for some time given their extremely long memories.”

“I’ll admit, I could have been less embarrassing i suppose. So, how exactly can I acquit myself?”

“Well, I am behind on my life drawing assignment.”

“So, what exactly are you suggesting?” 

He was standing now, his gaze trained on Caroline. She looked beautiful in jeans, ballet flats and a sweater that matched the colour of her eyes perfectly. Klaus had to admit, his mind was going to places they probably shouldn’t be but he decided to blame it on another part of his body that was threatening to betray him. 

“You could pose for me, I mean it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”

“If you liked me all you needed to do is admit it, sweetheart.”

“We’ll arrange some fruit for your nether regions don’t worry, I wouldn’t want to inflate that already sizeable ego any further.” 

“So, let me get this straight. I pose for your assignment  and you keep my secret?”

“And you also tell me why you’re here hiding out in Enzo’s atelier.” 

“Wow, you drive a hard bargain, love, but I’m up for the challenge.”

Turns out one complicated story about an impending engagement and life drawing later, school teacher Caroline Forbes and Prince of England Klaus Mikaelson took commoner/royalty relations to the next level.

In fact, they were both fairly certain they fell in love then and there.

Although his parents fought his wishes initially they came to love Caroline just like he did. Not only that but her grace, kindness and passion for humanitarian causes made her one of the most admired and beloved members of the British Royal Family. 

Meanwhile, Tatia Petrova who was also against the arranged marriage, married her bodyguard whom she’d secretly been in love with for years. 

And they all lived happily ever after.

[bitchfitch]

Copper artfight resource

big soft boy. if a cup of spicy hot chocolate was a massive apex predator/ obligate carnivore.

mikely stabbed him the first time they met and he fell in love Instantly.

an excerpt:

Death crept through the lavish halls of a rich man's home. Old cracked paint flaked beside sun faded tapestries and over well worn wood floors. The raged leather soles of of his boots softly thumping along with the creaking of old wood that accompanied his every step. He found the room easily, following the sound of a fading cough and short not quite gasping breaths that failed to draw enough air. 

He ducked through the door and the dying man greeted him with age hazed eyes and a broad grin.

"Copper!" his exclamation carried joy even if his lungs couldn't support more than a creaking whisper, "Bastard, it's so good to see you again," he stopped to catch his breath, his eyes closing as he did so,

"And you as well," Copper returned the smile as he sat in the chair beside the bed, "But to be honest I'm a touch surprised, both that you can see anything through those cataracts, and that you would… Appreciate my presence," 

The rich man chuckled, "Not many people have hair that color, even fewer are as tall as you. I may not be able to see much, but I can still see that,"

"I suppose you're right," Copper huffs with a hand going to his dark red mess of a mane "Still, you must remember the terms of our deal and what my presence means for you now?"

"I do," he nods, "I'm going to die tonight, going to see Min again," 

"Min?"

"My wife," he smiles as he speaks of her even as his words become more labored, "That quill you gave me, I wrote a letter to the girl I had fallen in love with when we were young. I didn't know she couldn't read, so she had to get someone else to read it to her, but when she'd heard what I wrote she came all the way into the valley to slap me and call me an idiot," he laughs, "Told me we should've eloped when we were both still fresh, before she'd found another man to call her own,

I'd not even thought that she'd have gone on like that. It made sense, she could have, and did, do so much better than me. But luck of lucks saw that husband of hers dead not long after. I felt bad for being so happy, but I couldn't stop smiling when she and I married,

That quill- You, gave me the happiest life I could have imagined. I'm glad to pay my end of the deal now, because it means I get to see her again,"

"It's a rare treat to find someone with no regrets, thank you for your story," Copper smiles softly, genuine and warm,

"Oh, I've got regrets," the rich man say "Many, but I don't care to dwell on them, not now… or… Well, one, there's one,"

"Hmm?"

"Min and I, we had a fight right before… She was so mad at me last time I saw her. Do you think she still is?"

"I don't know, but you will have plenty of time to make it up to her soon,"

"Yeah, yeah that's true… It's close now is it?"

"Moments if I had to guess," Copper shrugs, "The clot in your lung is migrating and will soon block off blood flow to the area completely. After that happens you won't be able to get enough air and will… fall asleep, then you will suffocate over a few minutes. It won't be the most pleasant of deaths, but it won't hurt badly," he simplified things greatly, not caring for the slight inaccuracies so long as they helped keep the rich man calm and peaceful in these final moments.

"Any final requests?" Copper cocks his head,

"I think… yeah, I think I want to be alone for this. Thank you," 

"Of course. Rest well then, and may your sleep bring great growth" Copper stood from his seat, the blessing leaving him without thought as the rich man closed his eyes a smile still tugging on his old, withered face.

The door to the rich man's room shut with a light thud as Copper drifted down the halls, a heavy sigh falling from his lips. He rarely visited the dying, usually he only came to the deceased caught between their death's and their afterlives to guide them across, and this was why. He knew where the clot was, it would only take a moment and a little bit of concentration to break it up enough that the rich man's body would be able to handle it on it's own. Sure, doing so would probably only buy him a few more bed bound days, a week maybe, but healers can rarely be trusted to leave the sick and dying to the whims of nature and he was no different. 

He wandered through the empty halls decorated with treasures that, do to a single deal made half a century ago, would soon be his, and found his way into a shrine room. Shelves upon shelves of precious jewls and metals, fine fabrics and sculptures filled the room. Though the alter beneath the stained glass window held only sea glass and shells that glittered from around a poorly made tapestry that depicted a stormy ocean.

The threads were too loose in some places too tight in others and there were places where it was clear the weaver ran out of one color and had attempted to dye more only for it to come out just wrong enough to be noticed. It was clearly made by inexperienced hands and now stood displayed still in it's loom in the place of honor on this shrine. Pride in its existence radiated from it and that made it stunning despite it's flaws. 

Distantly, he felt the rich man die, quietly and peacefully.

One of Copper's aspects would guide him across and later while Copper slept he'd dream of the conversation that aspect and the rich man would have, and he would dream of the conversations his other, near innumerable, aspects would have, and have had, and have been having with every other human who has crossed into his domain since he last slept. Then he would wake, and forget almost everything said during those conversations as they meld together into a messy but beautiful tapestry. All the threads visible and traceable in their places but ultimately he saw it not for the individuals, but the grander thing they made together.

He picked at the stones and shells scattered on one of the shelves, his dulled claws scraping against the rough surface. He should probably go find someone to deal with the body…

The soft creaking protest of a floor board that no longer fit in it's place being tread on called from behind him. Copper turned, curious to who or what would be intruding on this moment, but he was left slack jawed with a greeting trapped behind his lips as he saw the man.

Surrounded by gold and silver and precious gems that glittered in the low moonlight that flowed through the windows, this man outshone them all. He was tall for a human, coming up to just below Copper's collar bones, with broad, strong looking shoulders. His sharp features highlighted by the silver light caressing his warm tan skin and haloed by that same light echoing through the broken strands of bleach blonde hair that fell from his neat bun to frame his narrow face.

Light agitation turned to wonder and awesrrucked silence as Copper struggled for a second to find words, but once again those words died when he met the man's eyes, they were probably a deep brown but the low light turned them onyx. His gaze was sturdy, not cold or calculating, not bored. Determined but practiced.

The strange, beutiful, human man wore the expression of a butcher or a slaughterer, he did not draw perverse pleasure or joy from what came next. He was so obviously merely doing a job as he moved faster than Copper's confusion addled mind could react to that that alone struck more fear into Copper's core than if the man were hissing and snapping with rage.

The ice hot cut of an iron blade dug past the flesh between his ribs and into his chest even as he recoiled. On pure instinct he growled an awful rumbling sound that made the butcher- the hunter, flinch as Copper managed to stumble away, nearly falling to one knee as his own lung struggled to inflate. He could feel his magic burning along the wound as it tried, and failed to pull it closed. His hand going to his bloodied side in a vain attempt of staunching the flow. 

The hunter advanced, cautious and silent, his blade, slicked with Copper's own viscous black blood, raised as he followed the retreating god.

Copper hissed as his back collided with a shelf, cornered he pulled his attentions together just enough to attempt to teleport away, only to feel his magic jolt painfully within him as it failed completely.

The hunter advanced, already readying another swing.

In that moment Copper forced himself to focus on the warm summer night air, on the flickering candles and the heat of the hunter's body, most seals could be overpowered, he just needs to rush it hard enough. 

Heat leaves the room, the hunter stumbles with a pained gasp as the heat leaves him too. Copper doesn't see if the hunter falls because the seal gives as he uses all of that stolen energy to burst against it.

He drops to his knees on the cold stone floor of the cave he calls home. His blood singing through magic seared veins, his hands shaking as he braces one against the floor below him as his world swims, both from blood loss and the disorientation that always came with pushing his power that hard,

He struggles with his wound, gasping with effort as his magic finally starts working again. The wound tieing itself closed beneath his palm, a thick black scar forming as he comes down from the mountain top high of fearing for his life for the very first time since before the advent of this universe.

Copper slumps against the water-carved wall of his home, his head falling back against it with a deep buzz running beneath his skin, and he Laughs, deep and hearty and Alive in a way he has not felt in centuries.

---

A day passed, and Copper's wound still ached every time he bent wrong, sending a pang through his chest as his heart picked up at the memory that accompanied it. Truly, he could only go a few moments without thinking of the death dealing adonis that had, very litteraly, struck him to his very heart. He needed to find the man again, to see if a second meeting would make his blood race the way the first had.

Perhaps he would even find out why he'd been attacked, but if Copper was being honest with himself, he didn't care to know. The Hunter was a mystery, and like many mysteries, he was one that could be enjoyed as is, and did not need unraveling quite yet. Still, Copper couldn't wait around for fate to bless him with a second chance meeting. He needed to find The Hunter on his own, and that meant doing a little investigating.

The moment Copper had had time to rest he laid in his bed and let his consciousness drift to the aspect that could interact with the grand tapestry. The Hunter had not hesitated for even a moment, had not flinched at spilling blood, and so there was no denying that he was experienced. That, perhaps, killing was something that either came easy to him or that he was very well practiced in the art of it.

The hunter was young, maybe mid twenties to early thirties, which narrowed his search, and the location narrowed it further. That valley was a hard month long trek through ice capped mountains from the next nearest settlement. The Hunter probably lived and prowled within its confines.

Copper focused on the last ten years worth of threads from that area that ended in white knots, the tragic, violent deaths. This would be where he found what he would need.

Going by date he gently tugged the ends through the weave so that he could examine them closer. He was careful to not pull anything more than an hours worth at a time, dreading upsetting the careful balance of the fabric and the places of the souls that he examined within it. It took a few tries, a few years worth of deaths until he found the first one that he could catch a glimpse of The Hunter from. 

And oh how Copper dreaded what he saw. Five years before he'd met the man, an older boy, maybe sixteen with sharp, fearful and wild, onyx eyes and short, jagged ink black hair cried with blood stained hands, one still holding a blade, the same one Copper would become familiar with, it was still slick with the red of human blood as the boy stumbled back against the wall as the man he'd just killed gasped his last breath.

Copper found the conversation he'd had with that spirit, a man who'd heard screaming from within a home. He'd gone to help only to be found by the Chief's boy before he could find the source of the screams. Copper had reassured him, had praised him for his bravery, had not paid enough attention. He'd guided the kind man to his afterlife while the chief's boy who would become The Hunter silently wept beside the man's body, struggling against the tears as someone called out for him. 

Tucking the tread back into place with one hand and pulling another free with the other. He grimaced when he realized it was merely a visitor's thread. Someone from Copper's own home universe who'd come into this one for one reason or another only to find their end here.

The visitor's soul had not been theirs to keep stored away amongst those of their creations and so had already been returned home. Where it would have dissipated into the background energy to eventually become the fuel for something new. No life was stored in this thread, it was merely a place holder.

Copper found more threads like that in his search, nearly twenty pale threads all from the last few years lined side by side. Tragic human deaths surrounding them but none of those human deaths involved The Hunter. That was odd, very few places in his tapestry looked so strange and knotted, and most patches that did were of wars and disasters not… whatever this was.

If he had been tangible in that moment he would've been nipping at his claws as he tried to piece together what something so strange could mean. But no answers came to him.

He found the next, and most recent, human victim of The Hunter, a man now, still too young, but undeniably a man by Copper's math, cold and stoney eyed, tangled bleached hair and a badly bruised and swelling jaw. Copper would have been surprised if The Hunter didn't have a few cracked or missing teeth from the injury, the mandible itself might be broken, a serious wound that needs setting and cleaning imeaditly. Copper's mind supplied him with the diagnosis without him meaning to think of it, so focused was he on that wrecked face and the lack of answers it presented that his mind tried to give him what few answers it could, even if those answers were worthless.

The woman The Hunter had killed had sat silent and glaring at The Hunter who silently watched her die,  his blade dripping with her blood. She'd not spoken a word to Copper. Fuming as she stormed through the gate without any guidance from him.

He wished he had insisted on actually speaking to her, on finding the answers. The iron eyed Hunter was a far cry from that sobbing boy, and yet they shared a thread.

More visitors, more tragedy, and no more answers came from the grand tapestry. 

He needed to return to that valley, surely if tragedy struck this often they'd welcome a healer? Even if they didn't, the Oracle made her home at the very center, and while Copper tried to avoid his sister's emissaries, The Oracle would be able to tell him what he needed if all else failed. Besides, her daughter was such a cute little thing, it would be a joy to hold a chubby baby again. Would the daughter still be a baby? maybe she was toddling about already, having her first little prophecies as she explored the world she would be entrusted to protect.

Oh Copper couldn't wait to visit.

[be-ready-when-i-say-go]

Hi! Can you do let's fall in love for the night by FINNEAS with calum? Specifically the lyric "you won't stay with me I know but you can have your way with me until you go" and can the reader be that one saying or feeling that lyric? Thanks and sorry to bother, love your work!

Thanks for your suggestion and much gratitude for you patience. 

Please stay safe during these uncertain times. Drop a sweet message to your favorite blogger. Reblog your favorite fic. Recommend a fic to me if you want! We need to spread some joy.

If you feel so inclined, here’s my Ko-fi. But please know that I am making this content because I want to help you all through these times. 

Enjoy my masterlist!

Feel free to send me a song + a boy or small blurb request. 

_____________________________

Let’s Fall

Everyone told you not to fall for Calum. Everyone told you that he was sweet and he was thoughtful but that was something he extended to everyone. You had witnessed it with your own two eyes, helping someone get a box off the high shelf in the grocery store, stopping for the gaggle of kids crossing a good foot from the crosswalk. He bought lemonade for a kid’s stand at the end of the block once. The man oozed a softness that could melt anyone’s heart. 

But he couldn’t melt his own. And not for a lack of trying. Not for a lack of wanting love. But situations just never worked out. It seemed like with touring and his own lack of communicating sometimes, things kind of fell apart. 

it’s a dangerous game. To play with your own heart. But you are playing it, at bat with all bases loaded. Whenever Calum calls, even if it’s just to have someone else’s voice and life and even problem fill his own head instead of the bullshit he usually spiraled down, you pour your heart out. If Calum mentions doing even the most mundane things, grocery shopping, taking Duke to the vet, you ask to tag along. 

Tonight’s no different of a game. Calum’s sick of the four walls of his house, so he asks if he can crash at yours. “My apartment is tiny and you have a whole ass house.”

“I just wanna hang out for a little while. Maybe take a stroll around your block.”

You want not to flutter and squeeze at the thought of watching the setting sun in front of you guys as you wander down the block, watching birds fly overhead. Praying to the heavens none of them take your hair as a place to shit. But still enjoying the cooling breeze and possibly stopping at the convenient store not too far out of the way to stock up on cheap fruity wine and all the snacks that are no good for either of you.

But you swallow down the dream. “I don’t want you have to jostle around bringing Duke along and everything. I can just come by your place.”

“Nah, it’s not that much of a hassle. Please? I’m so bored,” he whines. And you can almost imagine him reclining into his couch with Duke in his lap. His head resting into the cushions and he’s grinning just a little knowing that soon you are going to crack. 

“Really, Calum. I can just come to you.”

“What part of me asking if I can come over to your place do you not understand?”

“Alright, smart ass,” you huff. 

“I’ll be there in 25,” he returns. 

The call ends and you’re left blinking at your phone, staring at your call list where you’re call with Calum now rests. “That wasn’t a yes,” you sigh but clean off your sofa, vacuum quickly and straighten out the kitchen table.  

When Calum turns up at your place, with a backpack, Duke on his leash and a few extra bags hiked up onto his shoulder you know immediately that it’s not just a few hour thing. But you say nothing. You let him inside and turn your attention to Duke. “Your pops is a very stubborn man, you know?”

“Oh but you love me,” he hollers as he treks down the hallway to the bedroom. 

You roll your eyes though your throat quivers. You had hoped it wasn’t obvious. You tried to tell yourself you weren’t falling. You were holding onto the edges of hope, hoping it wouldn’t push you over the edge. But it seemed it would. He returns, a baseball cap on his head. 

“Let’s go for a walk, yeah?”

“Wine and snacks?”

“Of course.” You take Duke’s leash and your keys. The sun’s hasn’t quite started to set. The hint of spring and summer allowing you more light for longer. A few neighborhood kids are laughing into the skies, a group. And for a moment it reminds you of your younger years. When after school, you hung out in groups and even if you had no money or knew you had to be studying for a test, it was a lot more fun to linger outside and laugh over some video, or story that was being shared. 

It reminds of when feelings and crushes were the biggest thing in the world and when Duke pauses to sniff out the base of a bush, you glance up to Calum. The cut of his jaw can’t be hidden by any hat, and you nearly gave. You nearly give in and stroke the scruff that’s not quite a beard. 

Now love feels like a gamble. This person could break your heart. This person could crush you. And it won’t ever be permanent. You won’t be permanently hurt. But the time frame for healing doesn’t make anyone want to jump head first into heartache. The other side of that gamble is that they could be the perfect person, they could be the person to restore your heart. 

But do you take that gamble with Calum?

And it’s not until after toting Duke around the convenient store and pointing out the bottle of wine you’re going to split and the snacks that will be shared begrudgingly and you’re laying on the floor in your living room with the TV playing whatever programming is set by the station that you’re giggling at the feeling of Duke’s snout sniffing at your face, that you think to yourself this is something you could get used too.

You haven’t had much of the wine and neither has Calum. A less than a third of it still rests inside the glass bottle and your glasses sit empty next to it on the coffee table. Your head is resting right next to Calum’s, but you’re feet point towards the fan and his feet are pointed down almost towards the hallway. You can feel the heat radiating off his cheeks, hearing the exhales.

“I want a garden.” The thought cross his lips so quietly that you don’t think you catch it. “Mum always wanted one and like, I don’t have a green thumb for shit, but I want her to smile when I hand her a bouquet of the flowers in my own garden.”

“Forget-me-nots are pretty,” you say, helping Duke up onto your stomach and he settles his head right under your sternum.

“I’ll plant you some. A whole corner.”

“That’s too much for me.”

He scoffs. “No, it’s not. You deserve more than a corner if I’m honest.”

While your fingers stop their work in Duke’s fur, you turn your head to look at him. He’s staring up at the ceiling. “That’s the wine talking,” you laugh. But when he turns to look at you, the tip of his nose almost brushing yours and you see the pulled down brow, you know it might be more serious than you estimated.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” The smell of the strawberry whine fills the space between the two of you. 

“Why do you always reject me?”

“I’m not rejecting you, Calum.”

“You didn’t want me to come over.”

“I didn’t want you having to uproot everything especially with Duke. I was offering to come over to you,” you correct. 

“You don’t want me to plant you flowers,” he continues on like you haven’t just spoken. 

“I only said I didn’t need a whole corner in a garden.”

“I like you but you keep acting like you’re not good enough or something. Like you’re waiting for me to go find someone else.”

Your ears are not hearing this. You’re sure that you’re hallucinating. All you can do is blink, mouth slightly agape. Calum could never like you like that. You weren’t even supposed to be in this game at all. You were supposed to just be friends. “Are you going to like me in the morning? Are you going to like when there’s no wine in your system? Are you going to like me when you wake up to my morning breathe?”

“Yes.”

It’s such a simple answer. Three letters. One syllable. One fucking word but you’re not sure if you can fall. “You’ll leave before morning,” you start, turning and looking back up at your ceiling. And with a thick swallow, your throat starting to close up on you because you want to believe, you want to give into the words but you know it’s Calum. The man who’s sweet to everyone. You’re no one special. 

“I won’t.” Calum reaches across, just to trace the side of your face. 

You should be cursing yourself for turning into it, rooting into his palm. “Want to know the crazy thing?”

Calum pushes up. It’s with a small grunt and he spins on his bottom to face you, one leg tucked up the other resting extended behind your head. “I’m down for crazy.”

“You could have whatever you wanted. And I know if it were just for a night, that would be fine by me. Like literally whatever you wanted from me, I think I could give it up in a heartbeat. No questions asked. And it just hurts, it could only be for a night.”

Calum’s careful as he collects Duke and settles the old man onto his lap. HIs fingers wrap around your wrist and pull you up. Now you’re sitting cross legged in front of him and he’s staring at you. His big brown eyes look so earnest across your face. “I don’t want just a night with you.”

“Then what? What do you want?”

His smile is soft and his palms are warm against your cheeks. “All of it. All of you. For as long as you’ll have me. I wanna call you mine.”

Hope, you think, wasn’t pushing you to your demise. The first tear stings and then slips down your cheek. “Okay, like I know wine makes me emotional but I swear not this bad.”

He laughs, a soft exhalation. His palms press down a little and you know your cheeks give to the pressure. “Can I kiss you?”

“Hmm-mhm,” you hum unable to nod in his grasps. The first one is soft, barely a kiss and you’re still registering the way his lips fit against yours before he’s kissing you again. And then a third time.

-H

[fitzs-trained-monkey]

Chapter Two: Wouldn't It Be Nice?

Rated: PG

~ Wouldn't it be nice if we were older? Then we wouldn't have to wait so long And wouldn't it be nice to live together In the kind of world where we belong? ~

It was 7:00 AM and the sun was up and out, and so too were the people. True to the fashion of only the grumpiest of bears, the bleary-eyed citizens of Copper Harbor were up and sleepwalking to work, falling asleep at red lights, and glaring into the black depths of their coffee as they tried to find a will to wake up or a reason to keep existing. Or both. Horns blared, children cried, people cursed, and that one guy slammed his head into a pole as he stared at a dude dressed as Batman who was directing traffic. (I don't think he had the authority to do that, but I wasn't going to challenge him.) All and all it was a fairly normal morning. At least in this town.

Like the entire population of Copper Harbor, a grand total of 100 or so permanent residents, I too hated mornings. But not for the same reason everyone else did. Sensory overload is my constant companion, but it's never worse than it is from 7:00 to 9:00 AM. That’s another reason I was staying in Copper Harbor. You could probably fit the town's entire population in the auditorium of the local high school. But even here, I could hardly stand the headache the morning rush gave me. I don't think I could bear living in a big city.

Although this time, things weren't as bad as they normally were because this time, I had a distraction. Engrossed in my conversation with my new friend, I managed to block out some of the noise. I found it rather strange that someone would be willing to keep chatting for so long, it had been hours and hours. I kept waiting for Jack to tell me that he had to go or something, but he never did. When I asked about it, he just said he couldn't sleep. Eventually, I knew it was me who was going to have to end the conversation. I had things to do, and I knew that, but I didn't want to be the one to say goodbye.

"Are you gonna get moving, or are you gonna keep talking to your new boyfriend?" A voice asked from above me. I looked up.

Perched atop a large green dumpster to my left, sat a boy who looked around the age of 18. He had fair skin and auburn hair that was long enough to show off its gorgeous natural curls while not being long enough to be annoying. (I was absolutely jealous of his hair. The guy's locks were heavenly!) He wore a playful smirk on his face and his hazel eyes flashed as they crinkled up at the corners, alight with mischief. He held his face between his hands and tried to flutter his eyelashes in an attempt to mock me. "Do you wuv him, Marty? Do you wuv your wittole Jack? Tell me how much you wuv him!" He teased. I rolled my eyes. I knew this boy well. His name was Isaac, and he was a royal pain in my behind.

"Isaac?" I addressed him, sweetly. Swiveling my head to peer up at him, I smiled the fakest smile I could muster.

"Yes, Marty?" Isaac asked, matching my level of false sincerity.

"Do the world a favor, sweetie, and shut your mouth," I told him. Isaac just grinned at me.

"No!"

I rolled my eyes.

"If I could throw a rock at you right now, I would," I huffed.

"But, alas, you cannot!" Isaac smirked and slid off of the dumpster. He landed on his feet before coming to stand over me. I didn't look up at him.

"One of these days I'm gonna find a way," I muttered.

"You've been saying that for five years and yet you've never made good on that threat. Are you ever going to put your money where your mouth is?" He taunted. I stuck my tongue out at him and he laughed.

Using the wall behind me as support, I pulled myself onto shaking feet. Despite every part of my body screaming for me to stop, I stretched myself out. Now, I looked up at the boy in front of me.

Isaac was just a little under six feet tall and scrawny like a twig. His good looks would have had all the girls chasing him. Isaac looked like most other boys his age in terms of physique. That is, if you excluded the massive gaping wound, red and raw, that decorated most of the right side of his neck.

The wound remained there, frozen, as fresh as the day he received it. It remained as fresh as the day it killed him. His pale, ashen skin and the purple rings surrounding his young, hopeful eyes bore the tell-tale signs of death by blood loss.

Isaac was a ghost.

"Don't you have something, anything, better to do?" I asked, glaring at him.

"Nope!" He replied, popping the 'P'. "But you do! So, tell your boyfriend bye-bye and get going!" I huffed at him but did as I was told.

Sent: 9:19 AM

Sorry, Jack but I have to go now. Thanks for talking to me!

Received: 9:20 AM

Okay, I guess I'll talk to you later. Have a great day and stay safe!

I smiled at Jack's simple kindness and tucked my phone into my back pocket. When I looked up, Isaac was standing there and tapping his foot impatiently.

"Ya done, lovebird?" He sighed dramatically. I gave him a prim little nod.

"I am indeed─" I used my arm to motion to the mouth of the alleyway with a dramatic bow─ "Shall we be off then, my liege?" Isaac grinned and rolled his eyes.

"Forsooth! Onward my fair servant!" He began marching dramatically to the mouth of the alley and continued out onto the sidewalk. I shook my head and followed after him, without the marching. I guess that was one of the advantages of being a ghost, if nobody could see you, you could do any of the weird crap you wanted to do, and nobody would ever stare.

When I caught up to my cadaverous companion, I pulled my phone from my pocket and pretended to be calling someone. That was the only way I could talk to Isaac in front of the public eye without seeming insane. I didn't think I was insane. But if I was, would I really know it?

"Isaac, I swear if you call me 'servant' again, I will kill myself just so I can beat your sorry, spectral rear end into whatever is after the after-life. Savvy?" I threatened. Isaac turned and started walking backwards, passing through several people that I then very-quickly had to dodge. Isaac could be a bit of a butt that way.

"Yes, Sir! I mean, Ma'am!" He exclaimed, sending me a mocking salute. I just groaned.

"Where were you last night anyway?"

"Watching the Lord of the Rings marathon in the theater, Sir! I mean, Ma'am!"

"Remind me, why do I let you hang around again?" I muttered, quieter than before. "Excuse me." I had to shove my way past a rather beefy guy who was smoking and blocking the entrance to the town's minimart. Isaac just walked through him. He waited until I got inside to answer the question that I had intended to be rhetorical.

"Because I'm adorable, cheerful, and useful to your criminal lifestyle. So, what are we stealing today?" I grimaced at his comment.

"First of all, it's not criminal for me to survive. Second, is it really stealing if I have no way to get money? And third, I need a hairbrush, some hair ties and a jacket because this cardigan is definitely not enough," I said through clenched teeth as I smiled and nodded at the teenage girl behind the counter. She was tall, blond, and I would bet 10 bucks that her name was Tiffany. She nodded back and resumed whatever it was she was doing on her phone. Isaac however was not done talking to me and ticked his reactions to my comments off on his fingers.

"One, true. Two, yup. And three, cool, but that last one's gonna be hard."

"Well in that case, I guess you better do your job really well. See, ya on the other side, mate."

Isaac grinned lopsidedly at me and I pretended to hang up the phone.

I walked further into the store and pretended to look at the hair care section. I gave Isaac the signal, scratching the back of my head. Isaac swept his hand along the length of a shelf, knocking all the containers of peanut butter to the floor. The girl behind the counter whipped her head around to look at me with wide eyes. She looked from me to the peanut butter and back to me. Gaping at the good 15 feet of distance between me and the fallen peanut butter.

"What was that?" She asked, apprehensively. I gazed back at her with wide eyes of my own.

"I have no idea. They just fell off. All by themselves!" I lied. Isaac snickered. The cashier raked a hand through her hair and hopped over the counter to pick up the fallen peanut butter.

While she was paying attention that, I scooped up some hair ties and tucked them into the hidden pocket I had sewed into the inside of my cardigan. Snatching up a brush, I stuffed it into one of my too-big, black, knee-high boots I wear specifically for this purpose. Then, I moved to help the girl with the peanut butter situation. I ducked down and grasped one of the jars that had rolled underneath the shelving unit and handed it to her with a smile. She then put it back on the shelf.

"Thanks for your help, sweetie!" She said, talking down to me. I struggled to hold my smile. I didn't like being talked down to. I don't care what I look like. Even taking that thing into account, she wasn't that much older than me!

"It's no problem, miss!" I raised the pitch of my voice to sound more chipper and innocent, adding in the 'miss' part to feed into her clear superiority complex. I then moved over to the section that held a bunch of jackets and coats hanging from hooks attached to the walls. I waved Isaac over to me with a quick movement of my head that most others would mistake for me flipping my hair. Isaac meandered his way through a few shelving racks and over to me. I pulled out my phone and started typing, letting Isaac read over my shoulder.

Big distraction this time. Make it mean. She called me 'sweetie'.

Isaac nodded.

"Aye, aye! ... Sweetie."

I shot him a scowl and went back to perusing the jackets.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Isaac push against one of the free-standing shelving units. It teetered and groaned before toppling to the linoleum floor with an ear-splitting bang. The head if the cashier girl shot up and she gasped before letting out a rather un-lady like stream of cuss words. Sprinting over to the fallen shelf, she desperately tried to get it back upright.

I took my chance.

I seized a fluffy black coat from one of the racks and booked my butt out of the mini-mart. The girl looked up as I pushed my way out the door.

"Hey! Stop! THEF! THEF!" She shrieked. I grinned and dashed down the sidewalk. When I reached the end of the street, I looked back and saw that cashier chasing me. I decided to show off a little. Scampering down a back alley, I boosted onto a convenient dumpster and sprung upward. The distance from the top of the dumpster to the first wrung of the ladder that led to the rooftop, was an impossible height for any normal person to jump.

My hands latched onto the freezing second wrung.

The cashier stumbled into the alleyway, gasping when she saw me hanging from the ladder. Like I said, it should have been an impossible distance to jump. I smirked at her disbelief and giggled, flicking my wrist in a wave before clambering up the ladder and to the top of the roof.

Sprinting across the roof top, I skipped to the edge and bounded over. I closed my eyes and pushed off with all my might. The wind rushed through my hair and past my face and then...

My feet crunched onto the gravel as I landed on the next rooftop.

The rooftop that had previously been twenty feet away.

An impossible distance for any normal person. Key-word normal. But that was just it. I wasn't normal.

I heard someone cheer from across the street and I looked up. Dan the Dope Man, our little town's resident dealer, was shaking his fist, hooting and hollering. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted to me.

"You go, Marty! Woo hoo!" He applauded me. I waved at him as I rushed to this roof's end. Reaching the edge, I did a parkour flip and touched down firmly on the next one.

The cashier girl was determined, I had to give her that. She chased me from the ground for about three more blocks before she collapsed, exhausted, onto a bench. I kept running along the rooftops, getting the occasional holler of encouragement from some enthused passerby. I leapt one last time onto the roof of Copper Harbor's town hall.

It was one of those really old town hall buildings. Like the ones in the movies. It was made of brick had a clock tower and everything. The whole old-timey shebang. Scaling onto the top of the clock tower, I grasped the spire and leaned outward over my little paradise town.

"GOOD MORNING COPPER HARBOR!" I shouted into the crisp morning breeze.

Even though it wasn't exactly pleasant, I let the few rays of sun light shine on my face as they peaked through the thick, gray winter sky. I could only take a few minutes of the direct sunshine, even as weak as it was, before I had to make my way back down the tower. I missed the days when I could lie in the sun for hours without feeling any sort of sting. Those days were now long past. When I got back to the flat part of the building's roof, Isaac was there, waiting on me.

"That was corny as Hell. You don't live in a frickin' movie." He criticized, smirking at me. I shook my hair out and brushed it back, securing it with one of my freshly nicked hair ties.

"Yeah, I know!" I replied cheerfully, feeling in a much better mood than I had been in earlier that morning. I always felt better after a run.

"One of these days I should push you off that tower just to see your face," Isaac said. I smirked at him.

"Well, if I fall, I might crush this." Reaching into my cardigan's secret pocket I extracted a five-inch Darth Vader figurine. Isaac glared at me, shaking his finger.

"If you so much as scratch Lord Vader, I swear I'll strangle you." Isaac was very protective if that figurine. Probably because his soul was tied to it. Yes, that's right. Isaac's soul was tied to a Darth Vader action figure.

"5 years you've been saying that. Are you ever you gonna put your money where your mouth is?" I jeered, quoting him from earlier that morning. Isaac frowned.

"You're not funny you know," he said.

"What are you talking about? I'm hilarious!" I scoffed with a wave of my hand.

"Let's just go home. We'll do the other thing later," Isaac sighed. I grinned at him and ran to the edge of the roof, gesturing to the snow-covered hills leading away from the town.

"And our hero sauntered off into the snow beside her trusty, albeit annoying, cadaverous compatriot!"

"Shut up."

"No!"

So the two of us left the main town and trudged over hills blanketed with almost a foot of snow. Isaac of course had no problems with the snow, walking easily over it, he made no footprints. When we came to the forest on the edge of the town, I quickly spotted the treehouse nestled between three trees about 20 feet from the start of the woods. We were home.

The tree house was built about 18 feet or so from the ground and the ladder that had once led into it was now long gone. It still laid where it had the day we’d found it, splintered and rotting under a foot of snow. Though we didn't know who had built it, Isaac and I both thanked them every day. Striding over to the thickest of the three trees the tree house was built into, I reached up and snagged the bundle of rope, thick and a little frayed we kept hidden inside a hallow knot in the wood. The other end of the rope was tied to a hook inside the tree house and I used it to climb my way inside.

I dragged the heavy wooden cover over the tree houses entrance hole then stood and surveyed my little home. It was fairly large, about 7 feet high, 20 feet long and 8 feet wide. There were blankets and pillows strewn about a mattress on the floor, a violin in the far-left corner, and a small table with a sketchbook and chess set sitting on it and two chairs set up to play. It wasn't much, but it was home now.

I walked to the shelf that lined the wall on my right and tugged this morning's spoils from their various places on my body, tossing them on the shelf. Carefully fingering Isaac's Darth Vader, I placed it gently next to my beautiful snow globe. A sudden feeling of longing washed over me, and I ached for the life I used to live. The life that I could never have back.

A silent tear slid down my cheek.

"It wasn't your fault, Marty," Isaac reminded me gently, appearing from thin air just behind me.

"I know." I turned back to him. "But that doesn't make it hurt any less."

"I know you wish you could go back and change things. I do too. But we can't, we just have to keep going. You'll find your place in this world, I know it!" He said, trying to be encouraging. I smiled at him weakly.

"Isaac, we're not supposed to be here. Neither of us belong in this world, and I wish we did. There's just no room for us. And I wish there was, that would be nice, but there's not. Not anymore. I'm gonna be stuck right here in this same moment forever. Just like I have been for the last 5 years. Deep down you know that. But at least you can move on."

"I'm not gonna move on until I can take you with me. I'm not gonna break my promise. We're going to heaven together, remember?" He tried. I wiped my tears away with the back of my hand but more just streamed down to take their place.

"Even when I do die eventually, I won't be going to heaven."

"Don't lose hope, Marty. Please?"

"I already lost it, Isaac. I lost it a long time ago. Thinking about it only makes things worse."

***

When Dean Winchester opened his eyes, he found that he was no longer in bed. Which was strange because he distinctly remembered falling asleep in the aforementioned place. He flicked his eyes about to try to determine where exactly he was. After just a few minutes, his foggy and sleep doused brain finally made sense of the information his body was feeding him.

Dean came to the unfortunate conclusion that he had fallen out of bed. Despite how unhappy he was with the results of his deduction; Dean was amazed that he had only woken up quite a while after the minor tragedy and not during the action of falling out of bed.

He must have been very tired.

But that was remedied now, and Dean felt ready to take on anything... In a few minutes. He'd have to get some coffee first. Peeling himself off the floor, he stumbled to the door and into the hall, making his way toward the smell of food wafting from the kitchen.

Now, whatever thoughts Dean had about his coherency when he walked into the kitchen and stuffed a bagel in his mouth, were not shared by the other two people in the room. If they hadn't known any better, Jack and Sam would have thought Dean was a zombie. A zombie who was hungry for bagels instead of a certain cognitive organ.

"Good morning Dean! Did you sleep well?" Jack greeted, chipper as usual. Dean frowned, snatching the entire pot of coffee, and sitting down with it at the table across from Jack.

"Mmmnhhaamuuuvggh."

"Understandable. Enjoy your coffee," Jack replied to whatever it was Dean had been trying to say. Sam raised his eyebrows at his older brother's lack of cognitive function but said nothing. It amazed Sam that he and his brother could be so different.

After a few silent minutes of nursing his coffee, the smallest bit of light began to shine through Dean's eyes. The waking process had begun. Just like the Windows 8 operating system, Dean's waking process was extremely and notoriously slow. But now Sam knew that if he were to begin a conversation with his brother, Dean would at least be able to understand it, if not participate.

"It's 10:45 Dean, just so you know, you slept for twenty-two hours," Sam informed. Dean's eyebrows flinched upward just a fraction of an inch. He clearly was yet to regain control over his facial muscles.

"Mumnnafubnna," He groaned. Jack held back a chuckle for Dean's morning state, he knew laughing out loud wouldn't go well for him. Dean wasn't someone you wanted to laugh at because Dean knew how to get revenge. A prank war was not something you wanted to entice Dean into. He would always win.

"Oh, and uh, Cas is back," Sam said. Dean looked up.

"Hm?"

"Woah, there. Careful Dean, that was almost a word!" Sam teased. Dean swallowed a piece of bagel he'd been gnawing on.

"Where?" He croaked out. Sam was about to answer but never got the chance.

"I'm right behind you, Dean." Dean jumped and spat some bagel out onto the table. Whipping his head around he glared at Cas. Jack couldn't help but snicker.

"Mmhn. Nah. Funny. Cas," Dean managed to grid out of his morning stupor. Castiel only shrugged and sat down at the table beside Dean.

"So, uh, Cas, how'd that thing go with the twenty bucks or whatever it was?" Sam asked their resident angel. Castiel frowned.

"The twenty tailed buck," He corrected.

"Yeah, that." Castiel sighed.

"No luck."

"Sorry to hear that." Cas nodded and shrugged again. Jack patted his arm.

"I'm sure you'll have better luck next time!" Jack encouraged.

"Next time is in seven hundred and eighty-two years," Cas sighed.

"Who's counting!" Jack tried to joke. Cas didn't laugh. Sometimes it could be very hard talking to Castiel.

"But I did find us a lead," The angel said, leaning forward and placing his hands on the table. The rest at the table looked up. "A very interesting one."

"Spill," Dean commanded, grumbling. Cas glanced at the bagel-eating zombie on his left and briefly wondered how Dean Winchester could be one of the best hunters in the world.

"There appears to be some extremely powerful ghost activity going on in northern Michigan. I was passing by a store and saw it on the news," Castiel told them, nodding seriously.

"You saw it on the news?" Sam asked, skeptical.

"Yes. The anchor woman said the video recording was 'going viral' or something like that," Cas answered, making air quotes with his fingers.

"Huh."

Sam pulled out his lap-top and began typing away. Jack briefly wondered how it was that Sam's laptop was always nearby when he needed it, but he quickly decided that he didn't want to dwell on that question and went back to his cereal.

"Cas, do you know where in Michigan this was?" Sam asked, looking up. Castiel nodded.

"Yes, I believe it was a Bronze Port- wait no. It was-"

"Was it Copper Harbor?"

Cas blinked before nodding again.

"Yes, I think that was it."

"Well, I think I found the video." Sam turned the laptop around for the rest to see.

Displayed on the screen was a video of the security footage of a minimart. Though it wasn't very mini for a mart. The footage was taken in black and white and although it was somewhat grainy, it was still clear enough to see the subjects. A young woman walked into the store, talking to someone on her phone. She nodded at the cashier and went to look for something in the hair care isle. Everything seemed normal, before a shelf full of peanut butter flew off the rack and crashed to the floor. Like someone had dragged their hand along the shelf and knocked everything off. But the young woman had been the only one in the store and she hadn't been anywhere near the peanut butter.

"Hey! Did you see that?" Jack exclaimed.

"What? See what?" Sam asked pausing the video.

"That woman stole something right when the peanut butter when flying. Watch it again!"

Sure enough, Jack was right. The woman had snatched some hair ties and a brush, stuffing them in a pocket and her boot, the second after the peanut butter tumbled to the floor. The four hunters kept watching. The girl who had stolen the brush and hair ties walked over to the cashier, who was picking up the fallen peanut butter. The camera never caught a glimpse of the thief's face as she ducked down and picked up one of the peanut butter jars and handed it to the cashier. Then the thief walked over to look at the jackets. She whipped out her phone and started typing something.

"What is she doing?" Castiel wondered aloud.

On the screen, the woman flipped her hair and leaned her phone outward, as if showing it to someone looking over her shoulder. But of course, there was nobody there. Then the woman tucked her phone away and went back to looking at the jackets hanging on the wall.

"Look, look, look! Right there! Did you see that?" Jack hastily pointed at a spot on the screen.

"I didn't see anything," Sam said, shaking his head.

"Rewind it and slow it down."

Sam did as Jack said. Rewinding a few seconds.

The thief on the screen went back to examining the jackets again. Jack pointed to that same spot as last time.

"Right there!"

This time Sam, Cas and Dean all saw what Jack was talking about. A face flickered into view by one of the shelves. Then, for a split second an entire ghostly form could be seen making a rude gesture at the camera, just before that shelf crashed to the floor. The thief grabbed a jacket off the rack and dashed out of the mini-mart just slightly faster than humanly possible. But the Winchesters and their two angelic companions didn't notice that part. They were too focused on the ghost. Sam sat back in his chair.

"Looks, legit. Should we check it out?"

"Yes." Jack and Cas said at the same time.

"No," Said Dean. The rest of the merry troop looked at him. "It looks legit. Doesn't mean it is." He shrugged, finishing the rest of his coffee.

"We've done more on less," Sam argued. "Besides," He continued scrolling on the laptop, "from what it says here, this isn't the only case in Copper Harbor. Crap like this has happened all over the town! Crazy, unexplainable disturbances followed by missing items. Reports go back for the last five years!"

"So that thief is using a ghost to help her steal stuff?" Jack asked, clearly exited.

"Yeah, and not just material items. Most of these reports come from the local hospital. She's stealing blood." Sam looked up at Dean who nodded.

"Sounds good enough for me."

***

"And that's checkmate, again!" Isaac shouted triumphantly. I moaned and slammed my head against the table.

"How?! How are you so good at chess?!" I shouted, my frustration at being beaten for the eighth time in a row was reaching critical mass.

"I have two words for you," Isaac smirked, counting the words off on his fingers, "Chess. Club."

"Uuuuggghhhaaa!!!"

"Wanna rematch?" I snapped my head to look back up at him.

"No!" I hurriedly shoved the chess pieces out of the way and brought out the checkers. "We're doing checkers! Lets see who's king now!" Isaac just shrugged.

"More humiliation for you, I guess."

"We'll see about that, pretty boy!"

"Mommy, mommy! She called me pretty!"

"I didn't mean it."

"I know."

"You're dead so it doesn't count."

"Well, that's just hurtful," Isaac pouted.

I smirked and pulled out my phone. Scrolling through the news and memes as I waited for Isaac to take his turn. He was always slow at checkers. As I scrolled passed a rather painful dad joke, I saw something that first caught my eye and then made my blood run cold.

"Your turn!" Isaac said. I didn't reply. I couldn't.

"Honestly, I don't know what makes you think you can beat me."

I tried to speak up.

"Isaac?"

He wasn't paying attention.

"I mean when have you ever beaten me?"

"Isaac."

"And don't say that one time with the ping-pong because we both know that doesn't count!"

"ISAAC!"

Now he looked up.

"What?"

I swallowed.

"You know how you said you always wanted to be famous?" I asked him weakly. I felt sick.

"No, no! I never said I wanted to be famous. I said I wanted to be a meme. There's a difference," Isaac said, smiling.

"Isaac?"

"Yeah, that’s my name. Why do you sound like you're gonna barf?" I turned my phone to let him see what was displayed on my screen and apparently millions of others. The footage of me and Isaac in the mini-mart.

"I think we just hit the prime time..." I said. Isaac looked up at me, if his pale, dead face could have gotten paler, I'm sure it would.

"Well, crap."

~ Wouldn't it be nice if we were older? Then we wouldn't have to wait so long And wouldn't it be nice to live together In the kind of world where we belong?

You know it seems the more we talk about it It only makes it worse to live without it But let's talk about it

Oh, wouldn't it be nice? ~

Lyrics from: Wouldn't It Be Nice by The Beach Boys

[glassworkspiderlilies]

got me good vibes thank god i ain’t driving

Fire Emblem Three Houses | Dimitri/f!Byleth | AO3 Summary: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd goes grocery shopping at 3:30AM and meets an enigmatic girl in the dairy aisle. It goes from there. (Or, something-of-a-college-cryptid Byleth comes and goes as she pleases and befriends the Blaiddyd heir. Or he befriends her. In any case, it's an interesting semester.) Notes: Stress relief fic of no real discernible plot; best described with “head empty, just typing”. I’m serious, please do not think too hard while reading, I got nothing LOL. On the other hand, I had a lot of fun. Approximately (and absurdly) 10k words; more notes on AO3.

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“Hey, Dimitri. One of those nights, huh?”

“Yes. Want a Mad Bull?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

It’s 3:30AM, and Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd is grocery shopping. The cashier on graveyard shift is well-acquainted with him now, at least on a surface level, as one becomes when you’re (usually) the only two people in the store at an ungodly hour. Dimitri buys him energy drinks sometimes. The cashier slips him extra coupons if he’s got them.

A combination of insomnia and nightmares keeps Dimitri up a lot, and while he can mostly regulate the insomnia, some nights are just particularly bad. Alternatively, if he is asleep but wakes up at any point, it’s too difficult for him to fall asleep again, so he may as well get up.  

It’s not the worst, since he’s used to it by now, and at university. There are things enough that he can do during these witching hours, grocery shopping at the 24-hour supermarket being one of them.

On the rare occasion there are other people in and out of the place, but Dimitri only sees them from a distance as they go about their own shopping. At this time, everyone’s minding their own business for one reason or another.

That’s why it’s a surprise when he turns into the dairy aisle to see a young woman standing in front of the cheeses. She’s wearing a soft gray hoodie with pink striping on the cuffs and hem, her hands in her pockets and the hood covering her hair, dark jeans, and knee-high boots. Despite the more casual style, it strikes Dimitri as somehow a little dressy, though Sylvain would snort and say he’d be one to talk. (Dimitri can’t help it. It’s how he was raised; he feels most comfortable in button-downs and crisp jackets. His most casual is a neat sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers, like now. And anyway, Sylvain seemed to have fun enough choosing things to add to Dimitri’s wardrobe. At this point, all of Dimitri’s friends borrowed his clothes if they fit—even Felix, who always did so without asking, and sometimes Dimitri never even knew.)

The girl doesn’t even turn despite the sound of Dimitri’s cart, and he thinks that he’ll wait politely for her to finish her selection before making his, pretending to look at the nearest shelf. But she stands there for a few minutes too long without moving, and so after some deliberation and hesitation, Dimitri decides to approach. It’s his last aisle, and he more or less knows what he wants, so he’ll be quick and out of here.

She doesn’t move even as he comes to stand next to her, and he murmurs “excuse me” as he looms a little over her to reach for a block of Gautier cheese. An unfortunate yet unavoidable action based on positioning, because she is spectacularly dead center of the things he wants, and she still doesn’t move despite the proximity.

Dimitri glances at her, wondering if she’s okay. Her expression is totally blank; she’s either zoning out or focusing extremely hard.

Well. It’s pretty late—or early—after all.

He reaches for a second block and puts the two into his cart, stepping away from the girl to turn his attention to the yogurts that he gets for Sylvain on the next section over. He takes two of the mixed berry ones first before debating over the others.

“Plain or spicy?”

It takes him a minute to register the voice and the words, soft and pleasantly mid-tone.

Dimitri turns to find the girl looking at him, and he thinks oh, she’s really pretty, now that he’s seen her in full view, before actually connecting the dots that she’s the one who had spoken.

“Um, spicy?” he offers, and the girl seems to think for a moment before she nods decisively.

He watches as she reaches for two blocks of artisan cheese, flecks of herbs and spices visible through the packaging—not one he’s tried before, or honestly remembered seeing here—and turns to plop them squarely in his hands, balancing them perfectly on top of the yogurt containers.

She then walks away, putting her hands back in her pockets.

“Uh?” Dimitri says belatedly, looking between the girl’s retreating figure and the cheese.

Am I supposed to buy these for her? He wonders, as he puts everything in his hands in his cart. He grabs a six-pack variety of yogurt before rushing after her, but she’s gone by the time he makes it to the registers.

“All set?” the cashier yawns, and Dimitri blinks at him.

“Wasn’t there a girl just now? In a gray hoodie?” Dimitri asks, laying down his purchases.

“Hm? Oh yeah, she walked out without buying anything,” the cashier says, starting to scan the items, “People just come in here to kill time sometimes.”

“Oh,” Dimitri says, looking towards the doors.

He completes his transaction, leaving the Mad Bull for the cashier, who waves his hand gratefully, and makes his way back to his car. The girl is still nowhere in sight; Dimitri realizes he wishes that she were.

He loads his groceries into his trunk and drives back to the dorms.

By the time he finishes finding space in the fridge for everything, it’s a little past 4AM. In about an hour and a half, Ingrid will be up for her morning run, and she always welcomes company. Dimitri shoots her a text for when she wakes up; he’ll pick up coffee and pastries for them too.

For now, he might as well work on his upcoming paper a little more.

.

“So, what’s with the special cheese in the fridge?” Sylvain asks later that day, when their childhood quartet all meet up for lunch.

“Oh,” Dimitri says, remembering. “That. Um…there was a girl in the supermarket who just kind of…had me buy them?”

Sylvain, Felix, and Ingrid blink at him.

“What do you mean, ‘had you buy them’?” Felix says.

Dimitri recounts the whole experience.

“And you bought them,” Felix says, with his brows furrowed, his eyes and tone clearly conveying what the hell, that was so stupid.

Dimitri just shrugs.

“We should eat it later,” Ingrid says, biting into her burger, and Sylvain laughs.

“Yeah, leave it to Ingrid,” he says. “But we should. To commemorate Dimitri’s weird 3AM experience.”

Sylvain makes a big deal of it when they do eat the cheese later, when their classes have ended for the day and they’re back in their suite. He puts the crackers on a plate and tries to cut the cheese into fancy shapes, which only Dimitri actually appreciates.

“Oooh, spicy,” Ingrid says, as she pops a cube into her mouth. “Hey, this is really good!”

Felix says nothing, but reaches for more. Sylvain laments about the lack of appreciation for his artistic attempts, but also agrees that the cheese is great when he finally eats a piece himself.

Dimitri, as always, cannot really taste the flavor, but he likes both the scent and the texture, at least.

“So Dimitri finally meets a girl, we get a brand new cheese, what else is next?” Sylvain says, leaning back on the sofa.

“It wasn’t like that,” Dimitri protests, then pauses. “But she was very pretty,” he admits quietly, and Sylvain grins. “Like a goddess,” he adds, even quieter.

Sylvain smacks his own face in secondhand embarrassment.

“There, you see? It’s Dimitri’s romantic awakening.”

“Hardly matters unless he gets to see her again,” Felix says lazily, and Sylvain is the one that makes a wounded noise.

Dimitri, on the other hand, merely looks thoughtful. He hadn’t actively thought about wanting to see her again until Felix brought it up. But he thinks he might like to, if the chance presented itself.

“It’s the awakening,” Sylvain whisper-hisses, and no one seems to care.

“Stranger things have happened,” Ingrid says, in response to Felix’s statement and not Sylvain’s, “In any case, you should get this again.”

She tries to eat the rest. Felix fights her for it.

(When Dimitri goes shopping again two weeks later, he can’t find the cheese anywhere. Ingrid looks let down, Sylvain looks surprised, and Felix looks offended.

“What the fuck? Go find your 3AM cheese goddess again and ask her,” Felix says, and Sylvain laughs a little too hard.)

.

Dimitri’s not sure why he allows himself to be dragged to parties, but he keeps letting it happen. Ingrid had brought them news that Dorothea was throwing her beginning-of-semester bash, which was always a Big Deal, and several of their mutual friends were going. Ingrid couldn’t not attend, because she was good friends with Dorothea. Sylvain was absolutely going, because he would never miss a party. Felix had not wanted to go, but Sylvain had somehow convinced him, and if Felix was going to suffer, then Dimitri better damn well suffer too, and so he relented from the combined pressure of Felix’s glare and Sylvain’s coaxing.

He supposed he could use the change of pace every now and then. And he could always slip away; people were usually too drunk to notice after a couple hours.

Sylvain borrows a shirt from Dimitri’s closet and wears it with three buttons undone. Felix steals a black jacket from Dimitri’s closet and wears it halfway down his arms. Ingrid does not take anything from his closet this time, but does borrow one of his hair ties.

Everyone tells Dimitri to change when he comes out of his room; Sylvain, as usual, takes control to make Dimitri more “party ready”, which consists of a long blue coat and off-white shirt—with several buttons undone, of course. (Dimitri buttons at least two up again later.)

The party is loud and raucous as it’s meant to be, but he’s amongst mostly friends, and so he’s actually not that anxious. There’s a few people he doesn’t know, but he is otherwise at least mostly familiar with everyone else. Annette bounces up and down when she sees them walk in, tapping Mercedes on the shoulder, who was conversing with Ashe. Dedue appears a moment later, and Dimitri’s main friend group is all here.

“Yay! I’m glad you made it too, Dimitri,” Annette says cheerfully. “Gosh—frowning already, Felix? Here, have a drink.”

Annette proffers her own cup.

“You already drank out of this,” Felix scowls, but he takes it anyway, and grimaces when he takes a sip. “What is this, fruit juice?”

“Felix is too good for Noa liquer,” Annette declares, turning her nose up, “Fine, go get yourself a beer or whatever!”

Felix teases her by holding her cup too high to reach, and she screeches at him until he finally puts it back in her hands. Mercedes chuckles as she watches them, and Sylvain takes the opportunity to compliment her dress with a roguish wink. She returns the compliment easily enough, with genuine warmth, which always throws Sylvain off.

“Dedue! I was surprised to hear you were coming,” Dimitri smiles, and Dedue smiles back.

“Dorothea asked if Ashe and I could make a few things,” he said. “Since I am here, I may as well make sure nobody gets in too much trouble.”

Dimitri chuckles.

“Oooh, Dedue, Ashe, you made food?” Ingrid chimes in, looking excited. While some things had obviously been bought, Dorothea was pretty picky about the specifics of her parties when she threw one. “I’m excited!”

“We did a really good job, if I say so myself,” Ashe smiles. “The meat skewers came out really well, so you and Felix should grab some while you get a chance.”

“Oh, you bet I will,” Ingrid says, already wandering away. “Hear that Felix? I’m not saving you any!”

Felix yells back, and in a second they all start wading deeper into the place, and everyone starts to branch off on their own. Dedue still mostly sticks with Dimitri, though, and the two of them stick to the peripheries.

Dorothea’s parties really span the entire apartment building; her neighbors across the way and downstairs are either friends or people she’s friendly with, so the doors to their apartments are also open for more space. If Dimitri thinks about it, it’s really nice, the way everything comes together.

As the night wears on and he’s consumed a couple drinks that Mercedes had kindly procured for him (with a reminder to drink slow), he begins feeling—looser, braver, almost a little giddy. Dedue is in conversation with Ashe, and Dimitri slips away to the kitchen for a moment, because there had been an extra dish of saghert and cream that he now wants in a very visceral way.

The kitchen is surprisingly empty—except for one person, who has climbed up on the counter, and is perched on her knees as she rifles through the topmost cabinet. The slit up the side of her skirt shows a generous bit of leg with the way she’s positioned, and Dimitri stares before he tells himself not to. The girl takes out two bags of—some kind of snack, and when she turns her head, Dimitri sees that she is holding another bag with her teeth, and also that he recognizes her.

“From the dairy aisle,” he blurts, and she blinks at him before trying to climb off the counter.

She teeters a little and Dimitri automatically moves to help her, in which he actually just lifts her off the counter by the armpits like a wayward cat.

“Oh—sorry,” he says, realizing that the action was way too familiar for someone who barely qualified as an acquaintance.

But she doesn’t look at all offended, and merely sets all three bags of chips down before she speaks.

“Thanks,” she says, then stares at him. “From the dairy aisle,” she states, in a manner that is confirming that yes, that is where they met.

A pause. She is so, so pretty, Dimitri thinks. There is sparkly gold eyeshadow brightening her already-bright green eyes, making her stare more intense. The more they’re at a standstill, the more nervous he becomes.

“I couldn’t find the cheese again,” he blurts.

She nods.

“It’s only stocked the fourth Tuesday of the month,” she says, ripping open a bag of chips, and taking a few to cram in her mouth before offering them to Dimitri.

“Oh,” he says, taking a chip. “It was very good. My friends liked it a lot too.”

She stares for a moment again, then offers him a tiny smile, a brief upturn of her lips. She had expected him to, he realizes, and she’s at least minutely pleased to have that expectation fulfilled. A short laugh escapes him at how odd this all is.

“You didn’t buy anything that night,” he says, though it comes out as a question.

She shrugs.

“I was just there,” she says, offering the chip bag again.

“Just there,” he repeats, taking more chips. At 3:30AM. “To…hang out?”

She gives a brief shake of her head.

“To stare at a specifically stocked cheese, only to give them to a stranger to buy?” Dimitri tries again.

She blinks at him, popping more chips in her mouth.

“Not a stranger,” she says, after she finishes chewing.

“Pardon? Forgive me, I don’t…recall us meeting before that night?” he says. He would have remembered someone like her, he’d think.

“You’re Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd,” she says, and he blinks at her use of his full name. Her eyes crease in amusement at his expression. “Not a stranger to me.”

Ah.

“But you are a stranger to me,” he says, and she shrugs again, as if saying it’s not like it’s something he could help.

“Byleth,” she offers, putting the open bag of chips in his hands, and opening up another one. (He looks at the labeling on the front. Beast meat and onion flavor. Huh.) “Want to go on an adventure, Dimitri?”

He looks back at her, mouth slightly open. She continues to stare at him, munching away from the other bag of chips, waiting for his response.

“Okay,” he says.

She nods, then rinses her fingers at the sink before motioning for him to follow with her head. She takes the two bags of chips with her as she walks out of the kitchen.

She navigates the crowd until she finds a group of three, all dressed looking as if they could kill, dumping the chip bags into the hands of a redhead.

“Hm? Chatterbox, where did you find these?” the girl says, reading the unusual flavors.

“Kitchen cabinet,” Byleth says, and the girl shoots her a half-exasperated look, but questions no further.

She hands one of them to the girl with blonde curls beside her, and Dimitri proffers the third bag as well, which the redhead also takes with a curious glance at him. Byleth makes to leave, but the boy with lavender hair and sparkly eyeshadow—the same that glints on Byleth’s eyelids, he realizes—stops her.

“Whoa, hold on there, friend! Not so much an introduction?”

“You know him already,” Byleth says, and the boy frowns at her.

“Yuri Leclerc,” he says, turning to Dimitri.

“Name’s Hapi,” the redhead pipes up, still looking at the chips.

“And I am Constance von Nuvelle,” the blonde says, tilting up her chin with a haughty smile.

“Dimitri,” he says, a little shyly, since they already know him. “A pleasure.”

“I’m sure,” Yuri says, with a nod of his head, before glancing back at Byleth. “Are you leaving already? And kidnapping the Blaiddyd Heir?”

“Yes,” Byleth says.

A pause.

“Well, carry on then,” Yuri says with a shrug. “Want a drink before you go?”

“Yes,” Byleth says.

They wait as Yuri makes his way to the counter full of bottles a little ways away, watching as he makes a cocktail in a shaker with professional ease. He strains the drink into three cups, carrying all of them back, and Byleth and Dimitri take one each.

“You get what I’m drinking,” Yuri says, eyes wicked, and does not offer up what it is. Dimitri sips, and by the way it burns, he can tell it’s strong. Yuri looks faintly impressed with Dimitri’s lack of reaction beyond a few rapid blinks. “I’ll tell the Heir’s friends where he went, if I see them asking.”

“Thank you,” Dimitri says, realizing that he doesn’t know where any of them are at the moment.

Byleth merely nods, and motions for Dimitri to follow again.

The night air is refreshing, and Dimitri feels pleasantly floaty as he trails after his new friend. They round the Black Eagle complex and head into the dark woods behind; he doesn’t know where they’re going and feels like he shouldn’t ask; he has an idle thought that he should text one of his friends to let them know, but Byleth looks back at him to make sure he’s following and he can only think about how pretty she is. He smiles at her, and she tilts her head before reaching for his hand.

“Hand,” Dimitri says, looking down at them.

“Hand,” Byleth agrees. “The ground is uneven here.”

He looks a little longer and then swings them a little. Byleth looks amused.

He enjoys the silent companionship between them for a little while but quickly becomes curious, so he begins asking her questions. What year was she? A senior. Where did she live on campus? In Abyss, at the Ashen Wolf dorm. Her major? More or less the teaching program, with a focus on weapons and tactics. Technically it was something of a double major, paired with history and international studies. It was complicated. Her weapon concentrations? This year, faith and reason magic. She’d already passed for swords, brawling, and bows.

He stares at her open-mouthed as she answers his questions with easy patience.

“That’s…quite the curriculum,” he says slowly, “When do you sleep?”

She glances at him.

“I manage,” she says, “I could say the same for you.”

He pauses, looking up at the sky as he collects his thoughts, sipping at his drink absentmindedly. She must already know what his curriculum more or less was—the three heirs apparent of Adrestia, Faerghus, and Leicester attending the same school the same year had been quite the news, and though their ideas of management differed, they did also overlap in areas. A handful of their core classes were inevitably the same before they branched off into their own areas of interest. But in any case, all of them were double-majoring with incredibly heavy courseloads to help prepare for their futures.

“It’s just insomnia,” Dimitri says instead.

“Ah,” she says, nodding. “So, 3AM grocery shopping.”

“So 3AM grocery shopping,” he agrees.

He’s not sure how long they’ve been walking, but even if it’s been a long time, he finds this all terribly pleasant. A distant part of him is aware that he would not be this at ease had it not been for the drinks he’s had tonight. Alcohol is wonderful.

Byleth pushes through some branches, and they walk into a clearing, and Dimitri looks up at an enormous tree, his mouth open.

“Ta-da,” Byleth says, though her inflection doesn’t change, “Biggest tree on campus. Good place to sleep under.”

“Now?” Dimitri says, with some alarm.

“You could camp if you wanted to. But in the daytime,” Byleth tells him, drinking from her cup. “Try it sometime.”

He blinks at her, unsure if this is just a general suggestion or specifically geared advice.

“Not sure I could find it again,” he says, because he doesn’t recall the path they took at all, too distracted by other things. Also, despite the moon, it had been quite the dark trek.

“I’ll bring you,” she says simply.

They go closer to the tree, and Byleth reaches up to one of the lowest branches and snaps off two thin stalks of leaves, inspecting them before nodding.

“Okay, let’s go back.”

“Oh,” Dimitri says, a little dumbfounded, “Okay.”

They make their way back. Along the way, Dimitri finishes his drink, Byleth stumbles over a tree root (her shoes are heeled, he realizes just now, how did she trek all the way in those?), and Dimitri somewhat insistently offers her a piggy back ride. She accepts, loosely wrapping her arms around his neck with both of their empty cups stacked in one hand, and Dimitri feels just a little giddy. He wants to run. (He tells himself not to.)

“You know,” she says after a while, resting her chin on his shoulder, “You shouldn’t follow strangers into dark and unknown places.”

“Not a stranger,” Dimitri says, feeling exceedingly proud of himself for the response.

He feels rather than sees her smile, and is disappointed he can’t see it. When they make it to Dorothea’s, Sylvain and Felix are outside, and the former hollers when he sees him.

“You stupid boar, why the hell didn’t you pick up your phone?!” Felix hisses when they near, and Dimitri’s eyes widen.

Byleth hops off of his back (and Sylvain stares), and Dimitri pulls his phone out of his pocket to see six notifications of missed calls and texts.

“It was on silent,” Dimitri says apologetically, and Felix huffs. “Sorry.”

“Aw, no harm no foul,” Sylvain says, “Dimitri was just occupied, huh?”

“I kidnapped him,” Byleth says, throwing the two empty cups into a nearby trash can.

“We had an adventure,” Dimitri says, enthusiastically.

“Did you now,” Sylvain says, looking at Byleth, who merely stares back and adjusts her posture like a challenge. It only serves to make Sylvain more intrigued.

“This is Byleth,” Dimitri says, “From the dairy aisle!”

“Oh, the 3AM cheese goddess?” Sylvain says with a laugh, and Felix flushes at the stupid moniker as Byleth blinks in surprise.

“Yes,” Dimitri nods, “She says it’s only stocked…uh…”

“The fourth Tuesday of the month,” she supplies.

“What the fuck?” Felix says incredulously.

She shrugs. A chime goes off, and this time Byleth reaches into her bra to pull out her phone. All three boys stare at her.

“Gotta go,” she says, tapping out a quick reply. “Balthus is fighting someone.”

“Ah,” Dimitri says, wilting, his eyes and countenance like a sad puppy.  

“You’ll see me around,” Byleth tells him with a faint smile, and disappears back into the apartment.

“He’s smitten,” Sylvain whispers to Felix, watching Dimitri stare after her.  

“Disgusting,” Felix says back, scowling. “He’s also drunk. Did she say there was a fight?”

They head back in to find the rest of their friends to assure them that Dimitri is alive. There is indeed a fight, but a result of two very brawny guys—one presumably Balthus, the other Raphael—testing their abilities against each other. Dorothea is yelling, trying to get them to take it outside before they break things in her apartment and someone else gets hurt, to no avail.

Dimitri catches Yuri’s eye from across the crowd, who grins and waves in a cheeky sort of manner, pointing back to the ring. Byleth then appears, sliding her way in between them with impeccable timing and launching her own surprise attack. She punches the one with wild dark hair in the gut, then grabs him by the wrist and throws him to the floor. The apartment erupts in cheers.

“Aw, what the hell, Byleth!” Balthus yells, sitting up.

“Didn’t you hear the lady?” she says to both him and Raphael, who is also cheering, “Outside.”

“You deserved that, B,” Hapi chimes in, “You started it.”

“Alright, alright,” Balthus groans. “Round two outside, then!”

Sylvain elbows Felix, and they both look at Dimitri.

“Smitten,” Sylvain says.

“Disgusting,” Felix says, with feeling.

(Alcohol is terrible, Dimitri decides the next morning, when he wakes up with a massive hangover. He ventures out of his room and all three of his childhood friends—who are somehow already up, how was that possible?—stare at him in one coordinated movement to incredibly eerie effect. They also look how he feels.

“We’ve got the hangover cures,” Ingrid says, placing a plate of greasy breakfast food down as Sylvain holds up the full coffeepot and Felix rattles their mega-size bottle of aspirin. “So spill about what the hell happened last night.”

Dimitri demurs momentarily to brush his teeth and wash his face. After, he sits down at their common table, accepts a cup of coffee, and dutifully spills.)

.

It’s two weeks before he sees Byleth again, having not being able to catch a glimpse of her anywhere. Garreg Mach was a big university, and he hadn’t recognized her from campus previously, but…now that he was looking, he’d kind of expected to at least see her on occasion from a distance.

It’s another late-night chore night, and it’s about 1AM when he hauls his basket of dirty clothes to the laundry room. He expects the potential of others doing their laundry since the hour isn’t that late, but when he pushes through the doors he does not expect to see Byleth sitting on top of one of the washing machines, legs drawn up, a hardcover book perched on her lap.

She holds up a hand in greeting, as if she had been waiting for him to walk through the door.

“Hello,” Dimitri returns, blinking a few times, disoriented.

One, her legs are distracting him, because they are so bare and it doesn’t look like she’s wearing pants. Two, while she isn’t disallowed here to do laundry, this is the Blue Lion dorm. She lives in the Ashen Wolf dorm, which is oddly isolated from every other housing, so there is absolutely no reason for her to be doing laundry here, at a location of total inconvenience, at 1AM.  

“What are you doing here?” he ventures, walking over and setting down his basket in front of the empty one next to her.

Byleth lets her legs down so they dangle over the side of the washing machine, just over her sandals. She is wearing pants, he sees—or shorts, rather. They’re just…very short, and her oversized sweatshirt nearly covers them. She looks comfy, at least.

“Reading,” Byleth responds, holding up the book, A Treatise on Srengian Weaponcraft.

“You’re studying—here?” Dimitri asks incredulously.

Byleth shrugs.

“Good of a place as any,” she says.

“I...guess it could be,” Dimitri relents.

It’s not busy at this time, and the machines are top-notch, so the noise they produce could be acceptable enough ambience. He stares at her a minute before he moves on to load his clothes into the machine, carefully measuring out the detergent and pressing his desired settings. Byleth watches him, and when the immediate task is completed, Dimitri nervously faces her.

“I um…I’m sorry for my behavior at the party,” he says, trying not to wring his hands as he thinks about the piggyback ride. “My actions were—overfamiliar.”

“On the contrary,” Byleth counters easily, “You helped me out.”

He brightens a little at that, and she tilts her head at him. After a moment she smiles a little, and Dimitri feels his heart skip a beat.

“How was the morning after?” she asks, and Dimitri coughs at the wording.

“Not ideal,” he admits, rubbing the max of his neck. “My tolerance is not very high. But I recovered.”

“I’ll note that,” she says, with a nod. “Yuri hits hard with his drinks. You took it well, considering.”

He debates whether to bring up his lack of taste, but decides against it. That conversation always goes one way, and he doesn’t want to bring up past tragedies and traumas, right now.

“You were okay?” he asks instead, and she gives him an amused look.

“High tolerance,” she says. “Father’s side.”

“Ah,” Dimitri nods. Not that he knows her very well, but she hadn’t seemed drunk at all—though by the time he’d run into her in the kitchen he wasn’t confident in his own observational accuracy. He doesn’t know where to go from here, and his eyes fall on her book. “So…Srengian weaponry?” he tries, and winces at the awkwardness of the delivery.

But Byleth nods.

“Known for their maces,” she says absently, cracking the text open again, “But their other weapons have some good durability.” She pauses, looking at him. “Might be a worthwhile investment.”

He blinks. The Blaiddyd line is well-known for their greater-than-average strength, and Dimitri is no exception. Still, he hates how easily things break in his hands; even iron and steel can shatter in his grip if he’s startled. But Byleth offers this suggestion so matter-of-factly, as if she were recommending a flavor of ice cream or color of shirt, that he can’t even be embarrassed about it.

“It might be,” Dimitri says eventually. “I’ll look into it. Sylvain has contacts in Sreng.”

“So do I, if you need another,” Byleth says, and Dimitri blinks at her again.

Sreng’s clan politics are notoriously turbulent, and Sylvain only had actual contacts because he had been trying to improve relations as the next head of House Gautier, whose lands bordered Sreng. Otherwise, Sreng wasn’t usually a place people had, or could get, contacts in.

“You…have contacts in Sreng?” he asks, dumbfounded.

“My father used to be a mercenary before a bodyguard,” Byleth says absently, “So I grew up as one, too. We used to travel a lot.”

There’s more to it, Dimitri can tell, but he doesn’t push, purely because he doesn’t know what, exactly, to ask.

“There more I learn about you, the less I seem to know,” he says with a wry smile after a minute.

She stares at him.

“And to me, you feel familiar,” she murmurs.

His eyes widen.

“Oh,” he says.

“Oh,” she agrees.

There’s silence.

“I only ever seem to meet you unexpectedly,” he ventures, after a long while. The washer beeps, the lock to the door releasing. He goes to open it.

“I’m not a ghost,” Byleth says, watching as he takes out his damp clothes and begins moving them to the dryer.

“That’s relieving,” he smiles. “I also only ever seem to see you at night.”

She only smiles faintly at that.

“Let’s spar,” she says.

“Wha—now?”

“No, tomorrow,” she says. “During the day.”

He’s not entirely sure what brought this on, but he does think he’d like very much to see her fight.

“After one o’clock?” He asks, wracking his brain for his schedule, and she considers it for a moment before nodding and hopping off of the washing machine.

She slides her feet back into her sandals ad begins walking away. Dimitri panics for a moment, because they haven’t hashed out any details.

“Wait! How will we—?”

“I’ll make myself visible,” Byleth says, already halfway out the door as she peeks back, “You won’t miss me.”

And then she’s gone. Dimitri shakes his head as he finishes moving the rest of his laundry. Once he straightens back up, he realizes she’s left her book.

A tether, he thinks.

After a moment, as he waits for his clothes to dry, he picks it up and cracks it open.

A good of a place to read as any.  

.

He tries to not tell his friends after lunch where he’s going (and technically, he doesn’t even know), but his antsiness is apparent, so his secret-keeping fails spectacularly. Sylvain and Ingrid tag team him, and he gives Ingrid a betrayed look.

“Fellas, do we think it’s a date?” Sylvain asks, holding out his hands as if he’s addressing a council.

“It’s sparring,” Ingrid says, “Not a date.”

“Could be a date,” Felix says.

“Only you would consider that a date,” Sylvain laments.

Felix shoves him. Dimitri hurries along, trying to leave them behind in the cafeteria to no avail. He really wishes he had been more insistent on details last night, because in a few moments, he’ll be at a loss of where he should be heading.

It’s a needless worry, because as he walks out, he is reminded of Byleth’s words. In the distance, where the space opens up and there are benches situated along walkways, an enormous amount of birds are flocking.

“Oh,” Dimitri says, and when his friends catch up behind him, they also stare.

“What the hell is that?” Felix says, and Dimitri picks his way towards the mass.

“Byleth, I think,” Dimitri answers faintly. “She said I wouldn’t miss her.”

When they near the birds scatter in one movement, though some brave ones flutter back. Byleth is indeed revealed to have been in the middle—and cause—of that, a bag of birdseed mostly empty in her hands. She nods her head in greeting as Sylvain starts laughing.

“Hello,” Ingrid says, whacking Sylvain once, but he doesn’t stop and doubles over instead, “I think I missed out on meeting you properly at Dorothea’s. I’m Ingrid.”

She holds out her hand, and Byleth says her name in return as she shakes it.

“I want in on the spar,” Felix says, and Sylvain wheezes, his laughter abruptly cut off by Felix’s self-imposed third-wheeling status of this potential date.

“Okay,” Byleth says without hesitation, and Ingrid and Sylvain sigh. Not a date.  

Dimitri isn’t offended, mostly intrigued. Byleth stands, brushing feathers and seeds off of her lap, and sets off in the direction of the gyms and training halls. The others follow, Ingrid and Sylvain too interested to stay behind.

Dimitri had brought a change of clothes, but it becomes evident that Byleth intends to fight in her jeans and nice blouse and heeled boots, so he doesn’t end up changing. There’s no conversation, though Sylvain fills the silence with chatter anyway, as if this is a routine they know well.

Byleth picks up a practice sword and Felix’s eyes gleam; Dimitri picks up a practice lance, handling it with a light touch.

“Best two out of three,” Byleth says, and Dimitri nods.

She lets him take first hit, the two of them warming up as they trade easy blows. She’s quick, but so is Dimitri despite his size. He does well enough at keeping her at a distance, but he misreads her intention and she lunges in close, tapping her blade against his ribs.

“Point!” Sylvain calls excitedly.

“No need to go easy,” she says, “For lances, the moment the distance closes, you have to be quick and readjust, or it’s over.”

“Yes, Professor,” Dimitri says, the title slipping out. “Ah—”

Byleth gives him an amused look but doesn’t comment, getting back into position.

They go again. Dimitri throws away some of his reservations but still not entirely, and she lands the second round too.

“Harder,” she says, and Sylvain whistles as Dimitri flushes.

“I’m concerned about my strength,” he admits, examining the practice lance. Breakage of the practice equipment itself is no matter, but it’s the ensuing issues that can arise.

“Mercenary training, remember,” Byleth says, and though they don’t see it, Felix, Sylvain, and Ingrid’s eyebrows rise.

Dimitri frowns, but takes a deep breath, and trusts her.

He whirls. Byleth’s reflexes are excellent and she dodges fairly easily, tracking his moments with an even sharper gaze than before. He doesn’t like fighting, but he’s been trained since he was a child; it wasn’t necessary in this day and age to know how to—it was more common to just hire protection detail against demonic or wild beasts, or other enemies—but those descended from the old noble bloodlines especially still held onto tradition, whether as a hobby or actual self-protection. Even so, he can tell the difference between them; she’s seen real battle, and though he has too, not in the same capacity. The way she strategizes and reads his movements in a split second is incredible.

The cracks from their clashing practice blades are louder, and Dimitri registers that his will shatter soon. It’s hard to control his strength when the fight is so exhilarating. He goes for it anyway, jumping back from her slash and spinning his lance in his hands rapidly; Byleth’s eyes narrow, and he lunges.

He just barely sees her move, her timing is impeccable—she jumps, stomping the tip of the lance into the ground before stepping forward and snapping his lance at its weakest point. As her foot hits the ground, she crouches low and sweeps his legs out from under him.

When he opens his eyes, she has her sword under his chin.

“A good move,” she says, “But it’s going to take more than that to catch me.”

She’s not even saying it flirtatiously. She does, however, smile at little at him before offering a hand up, and Dimitri thinks he might be in love.

“Oh, he’s done for,” Sylvain says under his breath.

“He doesn’t deserve her,” Felix scoffs, his tone almost bored, but his eyes are bright at the display of Byleth’s skill.  

Ingrid doesn’t say anything, and when the two boys turn to her, having expected her to respond, they see her typing furiously on her phone.

“Traitor,” Felix says, clicking his tongue.

“Just doing my duty,” Ingrid replies solemnly.

(Felix also loses all three bouts against Byleth, though he comes close the third time. Afterwards, they all end up training together, and even Sylvain puts his mind to it after Ingrid drags him onto the field.

“We’re getting milkshakes,” Ingrid declares, after they wrap up.

She’s sitting on the ground while Sylvain is lying flat on his back. Felix and Dimitri are less expressive, but they too look worn. Byleth is unreadable, but she does, at least, look a little winded. She offers a hand to Ingrid, while Felix rolls his eyes and pulls Sylvain up after he complains.  

“Dimitri’s buying yours, Byleth,” Ingrid says, and the two in question look surprised.

“Oh,” Byleth says, “I—”

“Allow me,” Dimitri smiles.

Byleth blinks at him.

“Okay,” she says. “Thank you.”

Felix and Sylvain look at Ingrid, who looks smug.

“I’ll buy yours, Ingrid,” Sylvain says, with a discreet salute.

“I’m buying my own,” Felix tells them.

They all fall into step. Byleth politely listens to them squabble all the way to the shop.)

.

Byleth comes and goes when she wants to, like a cat or a ghost.

On a few occasions she shows up during their group lunches, stealing fries or other sides off of someone’s plate (mostly Dimitri’s), staying only to chat for a few minutes before she is off again. Sometimes she is in the company of her friends—the ones Dimitri met at Dorothea’s party (who he learns are also her suitemates) or Linhardt von Hevring, who seems to be either half-asleep or hyperfocused on his thesis project. Dimitri actually does see her around campus sometimes now, but he does see her friends more than he does her.

“Dunno what to say about that,” Yuri tells him, when he and Dimitri cross paths and are walking the same way to their next classes, “Half the time she’s not in her room and none of us know where she is. She’s always been like that. That’s just Byleth.”

“You’ve known her long?” Dimitri queries.

“Maybe around—five, six years? Constance, Hapi, Balthus, and I banded together after some…unfortunate circumstances. Byleth helped us out of a tight spot during our last year of high school. Stuck with her ever since.”

“I see,” Dimitri says, and Yuri glances at him.

“You’re not bad, Princeling,” Yuri says after a moment. Most people want to pry into the “unfortunate circumstances” and “tight spot” that he spoke of, and Yuri feels more inclined towards Dimitri for not doing so.

Dimitri winces instead.

“It’s just…”

He trails off. Yuri can guess why.

“Ohh. Yeah, okay. I get it.”

Dimitri blinks at him in surprise.

“You do?”

Yuri doesn’t answer that. There’s little he doesn’t know about the people on campus; the Blaiddyd Heir didn’t question Yuri, so Yuri will not question him in turn.

“Byleth’s Byleth,” he says instead, “Count yourself lucky that she makes a point to find you.”

With that, Yuri nods his head and turns into his classroom. Dimitri stands there, mulling over Yuri’s words, before he realizes that he’s running late and dashes to his own class.

.

There’s a small park nearby that Dimitri goes to as well during the nights he can’t sleep. All it has is a couple of benches and a swingset and a basketball court; a surprising number of people use both during the day, but unsurprisingly, no one’s there at night.

Except Byleth. Dimitri is no longer startled when he comes across her, even though her presence is always more unexpected than not. She’s swinging on the swings, kicking up woodchips as she drags her feet.

“Hi,” Dimitri says, walking closer. “Need a push?”

She nods, and he helps her swing higher. Pretty quickly the height she reaches seems dangerous, but she just calls “higher” and so he keeps pushing, until it seems like she is going to go over the whole set.

“Um,” Dimitri says, pushing her once more, and she glances at him as she surges up.

As she glides forward and reaches the highest point—she jumps.

Dimitri yells, startled, but she soars through the air, serene and graceful with her arms outstretched, hair spreading out behind her. She nails the landing a ways away, and when she turns back to him, she has a faint smile curving her lips, looking—exhilarated.

“You scared me,” Dimitri says, holding a hand over his rapidly beating heart.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, as she walks back to him. “Again?”

He frowns at her. She tilts her head. Something about the way she went through the air—he can’t place that brand of fear. He gives himself a shake, forces a weak smile onto his face.

“Okay,” he says, and she blinks at him a few times before seating herself back on the swing.

She jumps three more times before she’s satisfied, then offers to push him if he wants a turn, or four. He politely declines, but sits on the other swing, and they move back and forth lazily.

“Drink for your thoughts?” she asks after a while, and rummages through her bag that he didn’t see earlier, pulling out a glass water bottle.

Dimitri debates, taking the bottle warily.

“Did Yuri make this?” he asks, shaking it a little, and Byleth smiles at him.

“Constance did,” she says. “It’s pleasant.”

It smells fruity when he opens the top, so he takes her word for it. It goes down easily and doesn’t burn at all, so he assumes (hopes) it’s of the weaker alcohol content variety as well.

“Do you…know what you’re going to do after you graduate?” he asks hesitantly, passing the drink back to her.

Once the question is out, he realizes the truth of it—Byleth will be graduating at the end of this year. The fact saddens him more strongly than he would have thought.

She’s silent for a while, sipping twice from her bottle.

“Yes and no,” she says finally. Opens her mouth as if to speak again, closes it. Turns to him. “You’re thinking about your position as heir.”

“I want it,” he says automatically, then pauses to consider if that’s true. It doesn’t feel like a lie, but…“I…I have never known anything else.”

Byleth looks at him, leans forward a little so that her hair falls forward too.

“That’s okay too,” she says, “To want—or to be okay with—what others want of you, until you don’t.”

He looks back at her.

“How will I know if I don’t?” he asks.

“You’ll know. Or…your friends will be able to tell.” She pauses, swings a little. “It’s hard to say.”

“You seem to have all the answers,” he says, and she raises an eyebrow.

“I’m not sure I really gave you any,” she says.

“That helped, nonetheless,” he says, with a smile. “Thank you.”

She smiles back.

They share the drink between them until Byleth speaks again.

“I avoided your question earlier,” she says.

“Technically you answered it,” he responds, drinking again.

She snorts, and laughs a little. Dimitri feels inordinately proud of himself.

“I’m answering it again, then,” she says, though she pauses still. “I might want to be a teacher. I might want to do what my father does.” She cocks her head. “I’ve been given a lot of choices. Theoretically, I could do anything I want.” She looks at him. “I don’t know what I want.”

Dimitri pauses, holds her gaze.

“It’s okay to not want, until you do?” he tries, and she laughs again.

“Does it work like that?”

“It could,” Dimitri says. “Probably?” He pauses. “You could pick one until you don’t want it anymore.”

Byleth swings.

“It could work like that,” she says with a slight nod. She glances at him. “Thanks.”

He gives her a helpless sort of shrug, not feeling like he really gave her an answer, either. He guesses he understands how she felt just a few moments ago, then.

“Bottoms up,” she says, and drains half of the remaining liquid in the bottle, handing the rest to Dimitri to finish up.

He does so dutifully, and she puts the empty bottle back in her bag. After, she kicks off the ground, swinging higher and higher. Dimitri watches her, then gets up, walking a bit of a distance away. She watches him in turn, then flashes him a sort of sharp smile before she pumps her legs once more for momentum, then sends herself flying.

He gauges the distance, adjusting his position, then catches her as she comes hurtling down.

“Oof,” he says, as their bodies collide and he wraps his arms around her.

“Nice,” she says into his neck, then leans back to look at him.

Oh. She’s so close. His eyes widen as he stares, lips slightly parted; her expression is unreadable, but she isn’t looking away, and he can feel her breath on his skin as she tilts a little closer, his heart beating so fast he swears she must hear it—

He lets her down. His brain immediately starts screaming. Idiot idiot idiot, why did you do that, WHY DID YOU DO THAT??? WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT???

Byleth, for her part, looks unruffled and unperturbed.

“Finals are coming up,” Dimitri says, very smoothly.

She nods, walking back to the swingset to take her bag, slinging the strap over her shoulder.

“If we’re awake, we might as well study,” she says, very seriously.

He follows her out of the park, walks her back to the dorm partway.

“Good night,” she says.

“Good night,” he echoes, and he watches her walk away until he can’t see her anymore.

When she’s out of sight, he squats down and puts his head in his hands.

(He puts himself on trial tomorrow, when his friends are awake. Sylvain and Felix sit across from him, and their gazes are piercing when he recounts the previous night. Ingrid does not sit at the table because she is more inclined to be sympathetic, and moves in the background making a smoothie for herself.

Sylvain wails when Dimitri tells That Part of the story. Felix is silent, just sits there with folded arms and looks so many levels of disappointed, though it’s probably not necessarily just about this one thing.

It’s like that maybe for forty-five minutes, this whole pathetic display. Ingrid leans against the counter, drinks her smoothie, and recounts a play-by-play on her phone into one of her group chats.)

.

Dimitri does not see Byleth again until they are well into finals week, and he tries not to despair.

“It is finals week,” Mercedes says soothingly.

“And she’s a senior,” Annette adds. “She’s gotta be super busy!”

“Plus, you said you never know when you see her!” Ashe says helpfully, “It’s been longer before, right?”

“But,” Sylvain almost howls, pulling at his hair, “After that? AFTER THAT?”

“Sylvain!” Annette and Ashe scold, but Dimitri feels the same. He doesn’t even have the number so he can apologize, because she always appears and disappears so suddenly that it keeps slipping his mind to ask.

Felix’s frown has grown more severe. Ingrid and Dedue look at each other and back at Dimitri, and say nothing. Mercedes and Annette look at Ingrid almost pleadingly, who gives them a sheepish shrug.

“It’ll be okay, Dimitri!” Annette tries again, and he lets out a sad sort of keen.

“For now, just focus on finals,” Mercedes suggests, “And then maybe it’ll all work out afterwards?”

“It will at least be a distraction,” Dedue finally chimes in.

Dimitri says nothing. Sylvain says it all for him.

.

Dimitri sees Byleth’s friends around a few times, and though he knows them and they know him, he hasn’t spoken to them very much, so he feels awkward asking after Byleth. Yuri, on the other hand, he knows better, and the boy looks amused when Dimitri (hopefully) casually brings her up.

Yuri has nothing new to share though, except he does insinuate that Byleth is hard at work at finalizing her thesis paper. Dimitri calms a little at that—enough to focus better on his own work later. Yuri gives him a look and pats his shoulder lightly before walking off.    

As always, when Dimitri does find Byleth, it’s unexpected.

He’s half dead after finishing his last final, one that took place in one of the more isolated buildings on campus. Pleased that he’s finally done with that, at least, he takes the scenic route back to his dorm—there’s a glass hallway that cuts through a forested area with a river, and it’s especially beautiful this time of year.

As he looks out, movement catches his eye down below, and he’s startled to see Byleth come out from under the old stone bridge and look up at him.

His heart leaps to his throat. She waves, and he waves back hesitantly, and then she motions for him to come down.

Dimitri looks left and right, trying to figure out the best way to reach her, and he goes.

He’s slightly out of breath when he reaches her, and she has a pile of stones in her hand when he does. He blinks at them, meeting her eyes, confused and mildly concerned as to what she might use them for. Is she angry? But she’d waved him down…but was it because she was angry and about to give him a piece of her mind?

“Do you know how to skip stones?” she asks, and it takes him a minute to process.

“I…suppose I’ve never tried,” he admits.

She nods, then proceeds to do so, showing him the method. He watches as she considers the angle, then snaps her wrist as she throws the stone, which skips beautifully across the surface of the river before hitting the other side. Byleth deposits half of the stones into Dimitri’s hand, and they spend the next few minutes skipping stones—or in Dimitri’s case, trying and failing.

He ends up becoming focused on trying to succeed, Byleth keeping him stocked with a steady supply of choice stones. When he finally manages to skip one (though it only skips once before it plops into the water), he shouts in triumph, turning to her excitedly.

“Did you see that?!” he says, and freezes when he catches sight of her face.

She’s smiling, the expression both amused and proud and gentle and absolutely, absolutely mesmerizing.

“It’s nice to focus on things that aren’t exams,” she says, turning back to the river. “You’re all done?”

“Y-yes,” Dimitri stutters. “You too?”

She nods, checking her phone.

“Handed in my last paper yesterday,” she says absently, “Finished up packing up my things today.”

His throat goes dry. It feels like the world is slanting and narrowing to this point, where Byleth leaves and steps out of his life forever (forever?) and this is where it ends.

“Oh,” he says, and it comes out as almost a whisper. He clears his throat nervously. “Oh. I—do you need help moving anything?”

“No, it’s okay,” Byleth says, “I don’t…have too many things anyway. I just wanted to—”

“It would be no trouble!” Dimitri blurts, somewhat frantic. He’s cutting her off, he knows, and it’s stupid to think that if he prolongs the conversation she’ll stay a little longer, but—it’s not exactly wrong, either, is it? “I mean, I’m sure some things would be heavy, and I could—”

She looks a little surprised at his interruption, but blinks it away.

“No, I—”

“It would be faster, probably, but I mean, not that I want you to leave faster—”

“Dimitri—”

“—the opposite, really, but I mean, you’re graduating! That’s exciting, I’m sure you can’t wait to be out of here—”

“Dimitri—”

“You probably have some great summer plans, and I hope you will—”

“Go out with me.”

“Yes, exactly, go out with me, I—what?”

He snaps to attention, thinking surely he must have heard wrong. Despite the fact he was unraveling at the seams, Byleth looks amused, if also a little worried.

“I’m—sorry, could you repeat that?” he breathes, and Byleth shifts her position a little, the movement just slightly unusual.

“Go out with me?” she says again, though it’s pitched more as a question this time.

Oh, Goddess, he hadn’t heard wrong. And…that shifting, the pitch of her tone, was she—nervous?

Dimitri gapes at her and she meets his gaze calmly, though after a prolonged silence she looks to the side, tilting her head down a little as if embarrassed.

“You…can say no, you know,” she says softly, and he blanches.

“No! I mean, yes! I mean—I’d like to go out with you very much,” he says, defaulting to a more formal tone and posture out of desperation.

She looks back up at him and smiles again.

“I’m…glad I didn’t misunderstand your heartbeat last time,” she says, and he both winces and flushes at the reminder of that night.

“I—panicked,” he says, looking away. “But I…regretted it very much, after.”

“I know,” Byleth says.

“You know?” he asks, mouth falling open a little.

She only nods, amused again, but offers no explanation.

“Come here,” she says, motioning for him to lean down.

He does, and she kisses his cheek.

“Hand,” she says, and he obeys mechanically, shocked by that simple action.  

Byleth pulls out a marker and scrawls on his wrist. He stares at it incredulously when she pulls away.

“My number,” she says pointedly when he doesn’t say anything. “I do actually have to go, but call me. Or text me. Whatever. Don’t be a stranger.”

“Of…course not,” he says, somewhat in awe. This is happening, it’s really happening.

Byleth looks like she wants to laugh again, but she gives him a little wave and makes her way back up to the building. It takes him too long to recover and realize that he should have walked her back. When he does regain his senses, however, he pulls out his phone, typing out a text as fast as he can.

Can we meet over the summer?

It’s only a few minutes before he receives a reply.

Yes.

Are you free next week?

Yes.

Canitakeyououttuesdayarounclunchtime

There’s a few seconds of pause, and Dimitri suspects she is laughing.

Yes. It’s a date.

He grins stupidly at his phone, rereading the conversation over and over again until he’s satisfied. Then he runs back to his dorm, throwing open the door with wild abandon.

“Guess what!” he shouts into the room, and he’s in luck, because all three of his suitemates are there, each in the midst of something different. Sylvain pokes his head out of his room, Felix looks up from the stove, and Ingrid looks over from the laundry she’s folding.

“Oh, shit, really?” Sylvain says, taking in Dimitri’s expression and also honing in on the number on Dimitri’s wrist. “You finally got her number?”

“We’re dating!” he announces, then pauses. “I mean, well, if I understood correctly, unless she was just—?”

“You’re dating,” Ingrid tells him before anxiety can take him over, grinning widely. “Congrats.”

Felix just waves the spatula in his hand, but he mutters thank the Goddess—about fucking time under his breath.

Sylvain, who is closest, is the first to be subjected to one of Dimitri’s bone-crushing hugs, and even spun around a few times. Felix hisses from where he stands, but is unable to escape being next in line. Ingrid laughs and pats Dimitri’s back when it’s her turn.

“Had a good semester?” she asks fondly.

“It was an excellent semester,” Dimitri says brightly.

“Disgusting,” Felix grumbles, and Ingrid and Sylvain laugh.

.

.

.

Dimitri knocks on the door nervously, trying not to fidget too much as he waits. He doesn’t have to wait long, however—but when the door opens, his eyes go wide.

A man roughly his own height, muscular and rugged with a scar across his cheekbone, a grave sort of face, and an air of someone who demands respect without having to ask for it, stands in the doorway with a large mug in hand.

“Can I help you?” he asks, his voice rough and deep.

Dimitri’s attention goes to the mug for a moment, which he registers reads “World’s Best Dad” in big letters, confirming his assumptions.

“I’m—here to pick up Byleth?” Dimitri manages, and to his relief, Byleth’s father simply nods and turns back into the house.

“By! Your Blaiddyd boy is here!” then, turning back to Dimitri, “Come in.”

He wonders briefly how he knows who Dimitri is on sight; his name might be well known enough, but he tries to stay out of anything where his image might be broadcasted. He steps inside cautiously, then glances at the man again. There’s something strangely familiar about him that he can’t quite place, and it’s not because of his relation to Byleth, because they look nothing alike.

“The kid’ll be a minute,” her father says, “Anyway, I’m Jeralt. Obviously, I’m By’s dad.”

“I’m Dimitri Blaiddyd,” Dimitri introduces, with a weak smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Jeralt just grunts and pats Dimitri’s shoulder in acknowledgement before offering him coffee, which Dimitri accepts out of nervousness. The drink is potent and bracing, without sugar or milk, and Jeralt refills his own mug.

Dimitri peeks at him from over the rim, still trying to figure out why Jeralt is familiar as the man stretches, the multitude of pops and cracks coming from his body making Dimitri wince.

“Don’t get old,” Jeralt tells him, “How reckless you were in your youth doesn’t fuck around when it cashes in.”

“You’re reckless now,” Byleth says as she comes down the stairs. “Cut back on the drinking.”

She’s in a loose blouse and mid-length skirt this time, a pink headband decorating her hair. Every time Dimitri seems her she seems to be sporting a different style. It’s fun.

Jeralt grunts.

“Yeah, well, can’t avoid recklessness in my line of work, and Rhea sure as hell don’t know how to take it easy. Trust me, the drinks are necessary.”

It clicks, then, and Dimitri almost cracks the cup in his hands. He lets out a strangled noise, and both Byleth and Jeralt look at him.

“You’re Jeralt Eisner,” he wheezes, looking to Byleth and back to Jeralt again. “You guard Madam Rhea—you’re the Blade Breaker, Seiros Security’s finest!”

Jeralt drinks his coffee.

“Well, it’s embarrassing to be called that, and also—kid, he didn’t know?”

Byleth shrugs. “Never came up.”

Jeralt sighs.

“Well, there it is, then. Yeah, Rhea and I go…way back, and now I’m in charge of her security company. By’s been trained since she was a kid, so…if you have any issues, she’s got your back.”

Dimitri looks at Byleth, who flashes him a peace sign with a deadpan expression.

“Thank you,” he says, for lack of anything else to say. She nods.

Jeralt looks amused, then waves them off.

“Anyway, have fun or whatever, and bring him back by curfew if he has one, kid.”

Byleth nods, and Dimitri looks back and forth, unable to fully process the information he’s just learned. But Byleth tugs him along, they’re out of the house and in his car before he regains his senses and looks at her.

“Every time I see you, you surprise me,” he says, and Byleth smiles faintly.

“Yuri says a lady cannot reveal her secrets,” she says, “But I think I’d like to start sharing them with you.”

Dimitri blinks at her, surprised, but then smiles.

“I’d be honored if you did,” he says. “There are…things I’d like to tell you as well, in time.”

She nods, looking pleased.

“We’ve got plenty,” she says. “So, where to?”

“There’s a new Duscurian spot that opened up a couple miles away. I was thinking we try it?”

“Lead the way,” Byleth smiles.

Dimitri starts driving. He lets Byleth choose the music and roll down the window; the wind ruffles their hair vigorously and she tries to keep it out of his face for him, which makes him laugh before she just rolls the windows up again.

He knows this is just the beginning, but there’s happiness bubbling up in his chest and a sense of ease and contentment over them both—so what he also knows is that it’s going to be a wonderful summer.  

[munofsilver]

Stuck In Between Chapter 2

This is once again for @gaalee-bingo This chapter is Sharing a bed from bingo bounce card 1. You can read it one Ao3. Summary: After a visit from an old friend Gaara hears some good news. Later on, Lee knows he will have to stay the night, but there is only one bed and two people.

The food was the best thing Lee ate in years. He couldn’t help himself and gobbled it down quickly. Now he kind of regrets it since he has the hiccups. The plates Gaara and Lee were using turned back into yellow leaves. “Where is he getting all these colored leaves?” Lee wonders. It’s spring, and the trees are full of green still. Not to mention Gaara never left the cave since Lee been here. By now, Lee gets it that Gaara lives in this cave, but Lee still has questions. 

With the rain, Lee can’t tell what time it is. He did see some sun not that long ago, so he knows it’s daytime, at least. Now that the hiccups are gone, Lee tries to get some answers. It seems Gaara has something to say. 

“Since you will be here for a while, I should know your name.” 

A red flag enters Lee’s mind. He remembers that if humans give their name to a yokai, they will own you and control you. Lee doesn’t want to be controlled again. He just escaped from that. With another sigh of annoyance, Gaara speaks up again, “Not all yokai can steal a person’s name. The ones that do will try to either force you or trick you into giving it. I only suggested it. I can’t do anything with your name, but if you’re that worried, you can give me a fake one.”

Lee doesn’t have any other name but his own and the one that his captured called him. He is done with that life, so his only option is, “My name is Lee.” 

Gaara’s ears rise, and he looks towards the back of the cave. He puts out the fire and places a hand on the cave wall. It opens as it did before, “Another one is coming.” 

Lee stands up as the cave opening starts it’s closing. Without a word, the young man enters the new opening. Gaara takes his hand off, and it closes. He heads to the back of the cave and claps his hands or together like he was going to pry, only to rub them a bit as he moves them over his head. He opens his hands and brings them down in front of his face, then on the wall. The cave’s back then fades away as four turtle looking creatures come out, followed by another tanuki. The four kappas leave, each giving a little wave at Gaara, while the tanuki stays. 

“Want me to keep it open?” Gaara asked. 

“I can open it myself on this side,” the tanuki said, sitting by a rock. 

Gaara closed his hands, and the wall returned, “What do I owe the pleasure, Shukaku?” 

Shukaku places a leaf on the rock and transforms it into a table. He places two cups and a bottle on the table along with some tasty human treats, “I’m here to celebrate.” Shukaku answered while pouring sake into the cups. 

“Celebrate what? Is my father letting me back into the yokai world, and I can see my siblings again?” Gaara sits down and takes the cup Shukaku slides over. 

“No luck with that, I’m afraid. You can still only visit by chance. I’ll try again next time I see him,” Shukaku raises his sake cup, “I’m here to tell you that you’re going to be an uncle,” Shukaku clings his cup with Gaara’s and gulps the sake. 

Gaara doesn’t move like a deer in headlights, “You mean, Temari is…” “Is with child,” Shukaku cuts off Gaara. 

A small smile appears on Gaara. He’s happy his sister found love. Gaara movies the hair that was covering his forehead and brushed a hand over his mark. “I guess this means she won’t be visiting much for a while,” Gaara takes a sip of the sake. 

Shukaku pours himself another cup full, “You’re father doesn’t know. She wanted me to tell you first,” he slams down his sake, “Kankuro does know.” 

Gaara finishes his sake and pours himself another one, “How is he?” 

“Fine. Still hates the human world. That reminds me he wants me to bring you something,” Shukaku brings out a colored box made out of marble.

Gaara has never seen Kankuro make or own anything so beautiful before. He reaches for it as Shukaku slides it over. 

“He didn’t make it. Kankuro said it belonged to your mother.” 

Gaara freezes in mid-reach. His mother, this was once his mother’s. The thought of his mother made Gaara move away from the box, “I’ll open it later,” he mumbled. 

Once the bottle of sake is gone, Shukaku leaves, turning the table back into a rock. Gaara picks up the leaf that the older tanuki left behind and adds it with the others in his magic leaf box. Placing both boxes on a shelf, he keeps hidden. Gaara traces his hand across the one that was once his mother’s before closing the closet. He starts the fire up again and opens the way for Lee. 

Lee was standing in front of the wall; there’s not much else he could do. There’s not much light, only a small opening that Lee couldn’t reach or climb too. After a while of staring at the wall, Lee looks around this little room. The only thing in the room was a garden. Lee remembered Gaara saying he had one. Lee makes his way towards the garden, but when he got closer, something stopped him. 

Some invisible force was blocking his way. Soon everything got blurry, and Lee felt a bit sleepy. He was about to pass out when he heard Gaara’s voice, “Enough, let the human go!” 

Like that, Lee’s vision returned to normal, and he is no longer tired. He is very confused, “Sorry, that is something to keep others out. I don’t want anyone to damage my garden,” Gaara says as he drags Lee out. 

“I would never do anything to your garden. I only wanted to look at it,” Lee defends himself. 

“I don’t want anyone looking at it either,” Gaara snarled non threateningly. 

“Then why put me in there then?” Lee breaks free from Gaara’s grip. 

“I needed someplace to hide you. Who knows who is coming out of the yokai world or what they will do if they see you,” Gaara growled threateningly. 

“I thought yokai wandered around everywhere,” Lee shyly says. 

“You humans have everything about yokai wrong. For the most part,” Gaara stops walking and turns to face Lee. “One major thing is we usually look nothing like in the pictures you humans drew of us,” Gaara crosses his arms. 

“I can tell since you have a human form,” Lee looks Gaara up and down, “How do you look in your animal form? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Different than other tanukis,” Gaara looks away, “I hate it.” 

Lee leaves it at that. He doesn’t want to upset his host. On a rock, Lee noticed some rice balls that weren’t there before. “Did you make those?” Lee points to them. 

Gaara looks over his shoulder at the rice balls. Then he focused back at Lee, “No. A friend stopped by and forgot them when he left. You can have some if you want.” 

Lee can’t remember the last time he had rice balls. His father, Gai, would pack him rice balls before Lee heads out sometimes. That was a long time ago, sadly. Does he dare take some? He did have a big breakfast this morning. Lee is starting to get hungry again, so he gives in and takes two rice balls. Leaving one left that Gaara took for himself. 

Little did Lee know that half the day is already gone. Looking outside, Lee can see a patch of less sun until finally, he sees the moon. Something pops into Lee’s head. 

“With all this rain, won’t the animal and humans that live in the forest drown?” 

Gaara looks up from whatever he was doing; Lee couldn’t see, “No. The animals were giving warning before the rain sprite came, No humans live in the forest. They pass through,” Gaara goes back to his thing. 

“Everything will be fine then?” Lee asks, daring to sneak closer to Gaara.

“Always has been. Do you usually worry so much?” 

“Does it bother you?” Lee is behind Gaara now. 

Gaara knows Lee is looking over his shoulder. He doesn’t mind; Lee will have to learn the hard way. There are two light green leaves in front of Gaara; he has already hidden the box. The tanuki places a hand on each of the leaves and closes his eyes. Lee watches in awe, wondering what he’s doing. There was a puff of smoke that made Lee light-headed, and two light green blankets replace the leaves. 

“That’s how you do it,” Lee didn’t know he spoke out loud. 

Gaara doesn’t say anything picks them up, and moves to a rock near the wall on the right. Placing a dead looking leaf on it and more smoke and a bed was there. That could fit two people. 

“Are you suggesting we share the same bed?” Lee’s eyes widen with shock. 

“We’re both males and will have our clothes on. It’s not like we will be doing anything,” Gaara looks at Lee, “You’re not suggesting anything, are you?” Gaara raised an eyebrow if he had one.  

“No, not at all,” Lee raises his hands and shakes them with his head, “I was only wondering, why not make two beds?” Lee pokes his two index fingers together.

It has been years since Lee slept in a bed. He almost forgot what they looked like. Sleeping on anything other than a cold hard floor is welcoming for Lee, even if it means sharing it with a tanuki. 

“I can only make one, but I can make it any size,” Gaara looks at the bed, “I’ll make it bigger next time if you want.”

“It should be fine. Thank you,” Lee smiles. 

Gaara seems confused. Besides his siblings, no one has ever thanked him. Now the young tanuki doesn’t quite know what to say or do. Should he even say or do anything? 

“Ummm. You are welcome,” Gaara slowly says. 

Lee decides he wants to help, taking the blankets, he starts to make the bed, while Gaara stands there watching. Working, Lee starts to hums a tune that Gaara remembers from his childhood. Before he died, Gaara’s uncle Yashamaru would hum the same tune to Gaara every night before bed. Once done, Lee turns around to see Gaara staring at him, looking hurt. Before Lee could say anything, Gaara asks a question. 

“How do you know that tune?” 

“It’s a very well known lullaby in the village I was born,” Lee answers. 

Gaara doesn’t react, but Lee continues, “There are words to it. I don’t remember. My father didn’t know the words, only the tune.” 

Gaara only nods. They stare at each other for a few minutes before Gaara walks away. 

“I have to attend to my garden for a bit. Feel free to go to bed if you want,” Gaara says looking, over his shoulder. 

Lee watches Gaara enter the wall, still unsure how he does that. Lee gets into the bed. It’s nice, soft, and surprisingly warm. Wrapping the blanket around his leg, Lee smiles as he closes his eyes. “I miss sleeping in a bed,” Lee sighs as he rolls to his side back, facing the wall. 

“You don’t sleep in a bed? I thought humans did.” 

Lee’s eyes open wide. Laying next to Lee on his side, facing him was Gaara. He was not expecting the yokai to be back so soon. Lee scouts back a bit. Bring the blanket towards his neck.

“We do sleep in beds. I used to long ago.” 

“Why don’t you anymore?” Gaara blinks. 

Not wanting to talk about it, Lee fakes a yawn, “I’m getting tired. I’m going to sleep now,” Lee pretends to fall asleep. Gaara keeps staring at him, and Lee can feel it. Looking over Lee, Gaara noticed a few small bruises on his neck. Like someone was choking him or wearing something very tight. Look both old and new; some were almost healed. Gaara turns his back towards Lee and drifts off into sleep. 

In the morning, Lee felt something soft around his arms and tickling his ear. He wakes up to see he is hugging Gaara’s tail. He’s facing Gaara, whose back is towards him hugging his big fluffy tanuki tail. It appears that Gaara doesn’t notice, but Lee lets go anyway. Too scared to see if Gaara is awake or not, so Lee acts like he’s asleep. 

“Do you like my tail?” 

Hearing Gaara made Lee pull the blanket over his head to hide his blush. Gaara wags his tail a little. When he knows Lee isn’t going to say anything, he rolls over to face him. 

“I only ask because most of the night, you were hugging my tail while petting it. Keep saying how fluffy and soft it is.” 

Lee can’t believe he did all that and that Gaara noticed it. Was he awake all night, or did Lee hugging his tail wake him up? Perhaps Gaara doesn’t sleep much; he is a yokai tanuki after all. When did Lee start all the petting and hugging? 

“My ears may not be fluffy, but they are soft if you want to touch them?” 

Taking the blanket off his head. Lee is looking at Gaara’s tanuki ears. They flick and turn to the side. Gaara sighs as he gets out of bed. 

“Maybe later someone is coming,” he glanced over his shoulder at Lee. 

He only nods, knowing full well what he means and needs to do. Getting out of bed even though he didn’t want to, Lee walks over to the wall. He is showing his hands to Gaara. 

“I promise I won’t look at your garden.” 

“Don’t worry. The room I’ll open for you will have something you can see and touch if you want,” Gaara walks next to Lee and opens the wall. 

Lee sees Gaara placing his hand on the wall and pushing it. Then the wall opens like before. The confused human will ask later right now he enters the room so Gaara can do what he needs to. If only he can stop thinking about that soft fluffy tail tickling his ear. 

[k-writer1998]

Rebel Hours (8/18)

Kwon Jieun always fit her parents’ image of the “perfect” daughter… at least to their knowledge. Away from prying eyes she was like any other girl living life to the fullest doing what she wants. When a little someone named Bang Chan comes into her life priorities are changed, mistakes are made, and her life finally becomes her own.

Fluff

w.c: 2.1k

t.w: mentions of attempted assault (idk if I’m tagging this right, I just don’t want to upset someone who didn’t want to read of such things)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      My body shot up as my heart raced from the terror. So focused on the nightmare that jolted me from my sleep, it took me a moment to realize the layout of the room was wrong. Once my eyes caught sight of grey bedding I knew for a fact I didn’t own a new wave of panic started to rush my system. Quickly looking around the room in an attempt to reorient myself, it was then I noticed the familiar scent of his faint cologne and caught a sight of silver from my hair. Gently pushing myself up to look over the shelf, the sight of Chan’s sleeping figure on the couch eased whatever worries I had left and my body started to relax again. He must have moved me to his bed when I passed out. I tiptoed to the bathroom, grabbing my phone along the way. Among the many messages, Seunghee’s were the most abundant so I quickly let her know I was fine and with Chan. Not even five minutes later my phone buzzed with a call from my worried best friend.

“Jieun are you okay? What happened?! Why are you with Chan? You literally disappeared last night without saying anything.”

“I’m fine Seunghee, I’m sorry. Stuff just happened with Kyunghoon and I didn’t know what to do. I needed to get away from there and without realizing it I ended up calling Chan,” I whispered.

“What happened with Kyunghoon?” 

      Venom dripped from her voice. I didn’t want to tell her but I knew she would find out either way. Maybe if she heard from me she wouldn’t immediately try to kill him.

“... He tried to force himself on me…” 

      My voice was small and I tried to take a calming breath to steady myself but was interrupted when Seunghee started screaming about how she would hurt the boy.

“Seunghee please don’t do anything,” I quickly spit out before adding, “When I get home I’ll explain fully and we can talk about how much you can and cannot hurt him, okay?” 

“Jieun he literally tried to attack you. What do you mean I can’t hurt him?!”

“You know what it’s like in our circle. That is a big accusation to make against a CEO’s son, especially a CEO like Kyunghoon’s dad. The only person who would take a hit is me.”

“Fine but I will make him pay. No one is going to do something like that and get away with it, especially to my best friend, not on my watch. When will you be coming home?”

“Whenever Chan wakes up I guess.”

“You know that’s going to be a whole nother conversation right?”

“Yes, I know. See you soon.”

      I hung up the phone with a sigh. I love her and her protectiveness but that will be a long conversation when I get home… and once Chan wakes up. I want him to know everything he’s getting into if he dates me. Let’s hope he still wants to after everything I’ve put him through… I gave myself an encouraging look in the mirror before quietly stepping out. Chan had apparently already woken up, looking  just as dazed from waking up on the couch as I was waking up in his apartment.

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, no. It’s fine. How are you feeling?”

“Better than last night, that’s for sure.”

      The air grew heavier, neither of us knowing how to approach the situation. I shifted from one foot to another for a moment before I slowly approached the couch and sat at the far end where his feet sat before he moved it to make space. Might as well get it over with… 

“I know a lot has happened in the past couple of hours and you’ve probably had questions for awhile now so I owe you an explanation… for everything.”

“Among other things, but yeah let’s start with the explanation.”

      He let out a hollow laugh as he tried to rub the exhaustion from his face. I carefully moved closer to Chan and waited until he looked back at me before I continued. 

“My full name is Kwon Jieun, congressman Kwon Jaesuk is my dad. His job has me presenting myself in a specific way but that wasn’t me. With the liberties of going away for college, I did the things I’ve always wanted to do but was never allowed to and it made me feel… real.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“My fashion sense with the dyed hair and tattoo doesn’t really scream daughter of an “upright and just politician” but I feel more me this way. Sadly, in his line of work I’m an extension of my dad and as I can’t change my parent, I covered up and continued to live as their golden child.”

“Okay, then why hide it from me? At first, sure it makes sense, but I thought there was more between us then just… whatever you thought was going on apparently…”

      The evident pain in his voice stung and I’m reminded I wasn’t the only one who felt the sparks between us. Even more so since I haven’t been clear with my feelings for him and to add I’ve been trying to make this a lot more lighthearted then it actually is. It’s time to be serious cause he deserves that… which also means I have to put everything out on the playing field.

“To be frank this,” I gestured between the both of us, “wasn’t supposed to be more than innocent flirting on that first night yet somehow I still ended up going back… I know things were getting serious between us but that’s also what scared me so instead I ran from you.”

“Why were you scared?”

      I hesitated, all the preparing and encouragement I built up flew out the window once I actually had the chance to come clean. The fear of losing him grew and blocked the words in my throat for a moment before being set free at the heartbreak in his voice.

“Jieun, I’m not doing this if there are any more secrets because if those secrets mean you disappearing again… I can’t. I need all the cards on the table.”

“... The reason why I was scared and why I ran was because I don’t want my parents ruining your life. They’ve done it before; almost destroyed my then boyfriend’s chance to get an audition at his dream school. I would hate myself if something of that caliber happened to you.”

“Doesn’t that only happen in dramas? Why would they do that?”

“I wish it stayed in the dramas… They believe I should be with someone of status who has connections because apparently anything less would be soiling my father’s reputation. And don’t ask if I’ve tried to fight it, messing with my ex’s competition was the price I paid for rebelling.”

“Then why did you call me out of everyone you knew? It seems you made up your mind that we weren’t something to fight for...”

“I couldn’t help it. No matter what, you are always the first thought on my mind. When I told you I couldn’t stay away after that first night, I meant it.” 

“Then what about the guy you met at the cafe by the university?”

“Cafe… wait you were there?”

“Yeah I was on my way to meet Changbin and Jisung.”

      Shit Chan must have gotten out of class early that day and I was blowing him off. Ugh then he texted me, I lied straight to his face, and he knew it was a lie. I moved to hold his hand and he didn’t pull away. I took that as a good sign and explained.

 “That was my ex-boyfriend. I wanted to clear the air after everything with my parents. I didn’t want my past to come back and haunt me because I want an us for you and me.”

      My voice dropped at the end. This was basically a confession and I’m far too sober to not get embarrassed by my forwardness at this point. His eyes scanned my face for deceit.

“I thought you were scared.”

“Emphasis on “was.” You are different than any other guy I’ve liked because no matter what, somehow I’ll find my way back to you. Like gravity keeps us grounded there is this force that always pulls me towards you. Who am I to defy gravity when neither of us want that?”

“And your parents?”

“I’ve been tired of hiding from them. I have a chance to be happy and I’m not going to let anyone stop me, that is… if you want to continue down this road with me?”

“Like I said, if being with you means danger it’s definitely worth the risk.”

      As he said that his hand finally clasped mine, a faint smile gracing his face. His eyes softened and I knew what was next. There’s still one part of the story I have yet to indulge upon.

“So about last night…” He gingerly started.

“Since the school year started my parents were trying to set me up with their friend’s son, more so when I took two weeks leave for my dad’s campaign. They are a powerful family and would be a great asset to my father’s campaign but as every businessman is, nothing comes for free.”

“So they were using their kids as pawns?” 

      His grip tightened slightly and I offered him a weak smile. I know how wrong it sounds but in the upper circles this was normal and although my parents never hinted at doing something like this, it wasn’t something I put beneath them.

“We were introduced last night. He was conceited and sleazy but I had to put up with him for my parents. After a while I needed a break from his constant self-praise so I excused myself to the bathroom and when I came out he… he…”

      My voice broke as the words struggled to leave my mouth. Having to recall the events of last night clearly brought back the terror. My thoughts were interrupted by Chan pulling me between his legs as his arms pulled me in, his chin resting on my shoulder. His overall presence eased my mind and I sat there, absorbing his warmth for a few moments before speaking again.

“... he forcefully groped and kissed me before I probably broke his toe with my heel and practically sprinted out of there.”

      When the words passed my lips they felt as disgusting coming out as they did forming in my mouth. His hands turned to fists, knuckles white with how tight he was squeezing them. I held one of his fists in my hands and gently pried it open. Chan's arms tightened around me, his hands finding its way to play with my hands. I jerked slightly when he grabbed my wrist to flip my hand over. Before I could pull away from his grasp he took the sleeve and pulled up, exposing the bruises. His gaze turned to me as anger and dismay swirled in his eyes.

“... He did this?”

      There was a dangerous tone to his voice that sounded so unfamiliar from the gentle teasing one I was used to. I wordlessly nod and gently remove his hand to hold again.

“Did he hurt you anywhere else?”

“Chan-”

“Jieun, did he hurt you anywhere else?”

“... just my upper arm on the left side when he grabbed me…”

      He was quiet, almost as if he was contemplating something but I didn’t want him to dwell too long so I broke the silence after a few moments. 

“I’m okay, let’s forget it,” I coaxed softly.

“Jieun this isn’t a small matter.”

“It isn’t but I have everything handled. My best friend’s family deals with security so he won’t get away. I can tell you want to do something about it but please don’t, for me? He’s not worth it.”

“Fine… I just wish I could have been there to prevent it…"

"Hey," I spoke softly as I brought my hand up to play with his hair, "you were there when I needed you and that's what matters. Thanks for that by the way, after everything you still came."

"I could tell something was wrong when I heard the voicemail. I couldn't leave my girl alone when she was in trouble."

      He pulled away and finally gave me that dimple-showing smirk that makes my heart flutter. He was willing to fight for this and so was I because Bang Chan was one of a kind and I wasn’t going to lose him.

[deans-mind-palace]

Suspirium (Pt.7)

Pairing: Prof!Sam x Reader

Summary: You’re in your last year of your Classics and Mordern Languages studies and you’re majoring in Latin and English. Then you get assigned to a different Latin teacher. And damn, he loves his subject. Too bad that he’s also hot. What is just a childish crush soon develops into something way more complicated.

Word Count: 

Warnings: Fluff and not-so-slowburn-anymore

Author’s Note: Chapter 7. Had a hard time writing this. 

Like always, my tag lists for Sam (thereby also for this story) are OPEN

Or you catch up here: Suspirium - Masterlist

You and Sam had not talked about this incident in his car, even after he wrote you that he had arrived home safely. Your thoughts weren't with Sam either, though they probably should be. Instead, you stared at the screen of your cell phone as if paralyzed.

Adam: We have to talk!

Your throat was dry and you swallowed while gasping for air. How did he get your fucking number? You made sure you burned all the bridges behind you when you left that night. How the hell did they find you after four years? You slumped down on the wall and your phone fell out of your hand. Two days had passed since the news. Two fuckin' days you could've dreamt of Sam's lips, but here you were, sitting on the edge of a cliff, having a panic attack.

You moistened your lips because they were dry as dust. Only a few hours ago Sam's lips were on top of yours and now your small, intact, hard-won world was about to collapse like a house of cards. And all you could do was sit idly by and watch everything you had built up so hard break apart again.

If you didn't have other problems right now, it would fascinate you how fast life could turn. Just a moment ago you had kissed your professor and now, only twenty-four hours later, you were leaning against a wall as a sobbing mess. What irony of fate. "Optimum est pati quod emendare non possis. It is best to endure what you cannot change," muttered you Seneca's words softly. It was Saturday and you still had to write your term paper for Sam's class.

For a moment you thought about blocking Adam and simply deleting his message and then pretending that nothing had ever happened, but you knew that it was pointless. Adam was one of the most influential men in England, as was your father. If they wanted your number, they would get it. No matter what it costs. They all had enough money...

You spent the rest of the day writing at your work, trying not to give Adam a thought, nor to let her wander to Sam. Easier said than done. Especially when you were writing an essay for him. Although you tried it with a hot bath, with your favorite food and also a hot milk with honey, when that didn't help with tea, you slept badly at night. You and Sam had stopped texting, and you had a date for tomorrow. Your initial euphoria had ebbed and given way to the worry of how you would face him. Was it all just a mistake? A misunderstanding? Do you regret it? Did he regret it? Maybe you should just say that something came up and Sunday didn't work out? All those doubts were playing havoc with your head.

The night was restless, and you could barely get an eye closed. Again and again you woke up at the slightest noise. You rolled around in your bed until your blanket and pillow were at the foot of the bed, then you were too cold again. In the end, you slept only a few hours, which hardly contributed to your recovery. While you almost fell asleep with your head in your breakfast, you thought about whether you should tell someone. You had never told Maddie or Brooks about your past. And there was no one else. You stared wearily at the murky liquid in your coffee cup.

In a few hours you would have to show up at Sam's house and even though you didn't feel much joy, deep down you were happy to see him again. You spent a quiet day until your appointment and started getting ready for the meeting in the afternoon. You packed your manuscript and a few minutes later Sam wrote you his address.  

It wasn't hard to find. In fact, the apartment was only two blocks from yours, so you got there way too soon. You were just thinking about going for a walk, but by then, Sam's door was ripped open and he beamed at you. "Hey there, Y/N. Come in." With a smile, he stepped aside and let you in. And you felt a warm feeling in your heart. You looked around a little bit. It was a small but comfortable apartment. A bit sporadic, just like most men's apartments. The kitchen was open and led into the cosy living room, which like his office, was littered with bookshelves. In the middle was a big flat screen, which didn't quite fit into the picture. The hallway was divided from the living area by an open room divider. On a chest of drawers were some pictures of Sam and his brother. Next to them was a blue-eyed man with brown hair, around whom they had both wrapped one arm. The brothers were wearing band shirts and behind them the crowd of a concert could be seen. The picture was a bit blurred and while the two brothers were celebrating frolicsomely with beer in their hands, the third man seemed to feel a bit uncomfortable. He threw a reserved, almost shy smile into the camera and seemed calmer than his companions. Sam's eyes fell on the picture and he smiled, but said nothing.

Before you could look around any further, a scent rose up your nose and made your mouth water. Sam laughed when he saw your dreamy look. "I made pineapple chicken." You looked at him in surprise. "Well, it's the only dish I don't burn. I didn't want to risk serving you something burnt, so I better played it safe." You started to laugh. " Pineapple chicken is perfect." Sam was smiling. "Very good. So make yourself comfortable and make yourself at home." he instructed you, and an egg timer began to chime. "Isn't there anything I can do to help?" you asked, feeling somewhat useless and lost in the room. But Sam shook his head, causing a few brown streaks to fall on his face. "At least let me set the table," you asked and Sam nodded. "All right, then. Come with me, I'll show you where everything is."

While Sam pulled the nice smelling chicken out of the oven and turned it over, you set the table. Sam hummed to himself as he worked and reminded you once again how good it felt to be around him. The table was set, but Sam had insisted on having some wine. The problem was that the glasses were on top of the cupboard. You weren't little, but this was a household of a giant. "Sam?" "Huh?" "I can't reach the wine glasses." A throaty laugh rang out before Sam came into the kitchen. Before you knew it, he was standing right behind you. His body radiated a pleasant warmth and his aftershave enveloped you in a cloud. He was so close that you could feel his breath on the back of your neck. He had trapped you between the kitchen counter and his body and when you tried to turn, your nose almost touched his. "Wait." Suddenly you felt two strong hands on your hips lifting you up. After making a startled sound, you began to chuckle and fished two wine glasses from the shelf.

After Sam dropped you off, you turned to him again and you began to think about the kiss two days ago. None of you had mentioned it before... If you had wanted to, you could have counted the brown speckles in his green eyes, that's how close you were. You placed the wine glasses blindly behind you and his eyes followed your movements, because he still hadn't stepped back. The air crackled between you. You cleared your throat. "Will we talk about it?" you asked and could not suppress the hopeful undertone in your voice. Sam's eyes fixed you sharply and you turned inside under the gaze. "About what?" asked the brown-haired man and his voice sounded so deep and sensual that a shiver ran down your back. Even before you could answer, Sam bent over and pressed a quick kiss on your lips. Just long enough to get you hooked for more.

"You mean about that?" he asked as he withdrew with a mischievous grin to look at you. The guy knew exactly what he was doing to you and you wanted to give him a nasty look. You just managed to nod. He laughed softly and it was just a deep, sensual rumble in his chest. "Exactly." you brought out, but your voice almost broke. Hurriedly you buried your hands in his hair and pulled him towards you. A grin graced his lips as he paused just before your mouth and you whined in frustration. "Eager, are we?" he murmured. You scoffed, which made him laugh. This time it was up to you to bridge the gap between you. It was a passionate kiss, and Sam was so skilled, you couldn't get enough. You would have loved to kiss him all day long and with every kiss you would have forgotten your troubles a little bit more.

The egg timer ripped you apart rudely and you breathed heavily. You were still so caught in the feeling of Sam's lips that you couldn't open your eyes. You felt Sam's thumb stroke your lower lip and when you finally opened your eyes, Sam leaned his forehead against yours. His breath ghosted over your lips. You hated to break the silence between you two, but... "Sam, I think the food's about to burn," you muttered. Sam snorted. "Let it. I don't care." He sounded like a defiant child and that made you smile.

After a little persuasion, the food didn't burn after all and you talked the whole meal over. Sam was a superb cook, though he insisted it was the only dish he could manage. There was a familiarity between you that you had not felt in the presence of another human being for a long time. After everything was cleared away, you made yourselves comfortable on his sofa. Your legs were entangled and Sam held the manuscript over your heads as you discussed his notes. Now and then he would bend down and give you a kiss on the lips. None of you thought about university and all the people out there in the world who wouldn't like you. You wanted to freeze this moment forever. It was like a dream. Unfortunately, we all have to wake up from our dreams at some point...

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