#we’ve hardly had any snow this entire season

[bluebelleisabelle]

I hope y’all have had a wonderful day! This is what I woke up to hehe

The view from our front doors looked startling for a moment until I realized it’s just a perspective thing 💀 I for sure thought the void was gonna consume me

[snackhobi]

this is my part of the rockin’ around the christmas tropes collab with @yeojaa, @underthejoon @ladyartemesia, @ppersonna, @untaemedqueen, @xjoonchildx ✨ MERRY (early) CHRISTMAS Y’ALL

summary: yoongi is your favourite regular. he’s patient, polite, and predictable, a-large-black-coffee-to-go-please, no cream, no sugar, thank you. rinse and repeat. the seasons might change, but yoongi’s order stays the same.

and then one fateful day in winter, yoongi asks about the weekly specials, orders a cup of christmas and sugary sweetness, and everything starts changing.

pairing: yoongi x barista f!reader / word count: 14.8k / genre: coffeeshop!au, fluff, dash of smut (NSFW)

warnings: slow burn, terrible drink concoctions, pining, miscommunication (kind of/reader comes to incorrect conclusions based on literally nothing), the tiniest bit of swearing, heated makeouts, oral (m receiving), I think that’s it

a/n: I have a lot of people to thank: thank you to my loveliest most beautiful wife @yeojaa for the beautiful banner 🥺💖 thank you to @morndas for helping me name this fic and suggesting some of the awful weekly specials featured within 🥰 thank you to @yeoldontknow for letting me have multiple meltdowns at her and for letting me pick her brain about working in the music industry, and for helping me with plot points I wasn’t sure about!! 💕

also thank you to @hobi-gif for helping me brainstorm the original fic idea with her; she hasn’t beta’ed this fic because I am TERRIBLE and literally finished this like an hour before posting. that’s on me and not her. I am a shambles without her indomitable proof reading skills; any mistakes are down to me, and I apologise for that. I’ve only read this through like once, sorry in advance, I’m literally formatting this while I should be getting ready for work

Being a barista isn’t all bad.

Like, okay, you’re on your feet for hours at a time, the pay isn’t exactly the highest in the world, and coffee beans have a tendency to end up in the weirdest places (how did you get the light roast in your bra?)—but it’s not entirely terrible.

Here’s a (totally not comprehensive) list of good things about working at the Paradise coffee shop:

The free drinks (y’know, for taste testing purposes)

The free food (you probably eat more than you’re actually allowed, but who’s telling?)

Your coworkers (like Taehyung, who is—yep—currently shoving a whole mini panettone in his mouth)

Most of the customers are pretty nice, too (you have some lovely regulars)

(If you had to be more specific, there’s one regular in particular that you really, really like—)

(Yoongi appears like clockwork every week. Just after the Tuesday lunch rush, the bell above the door will sing out its greeting as he steps inside, ordering the same drink each and every time he’s here—a large Americano, to go, plain and simple and unadorned, no room for cream or milk, no added sugar or sweetener.)

(Yoongi really is the perfect customer. He has been from the very beginning, a point of quiet in a churning sea of hot, sweaty people all begging for frappés and milkshakes, the hottest point at the very peak of summer. The queue had been growing longer and longer, out of the doors as the blenders whirred their way through a neverending cascade of sugary, iced blends; the counters were a mess and all the baristas were running around and everything was chaos and in had walked this guy, all dark hair and dark eyes and dark clothes, even in the height of summer—you were ready for death at this point, hands sticky with syrup and apron streaked with flecks from almost every drink from the summer menu, and you’d braced yourself for some terse words, impatience and passive aggressive comments on the long wait—)

(—and this intimidating man had just patiently asked for an iced Americano, calm and quiet and polite.)

(You’d fallen a little in love, then and there. Fallen in love with that simple order, quick and easy to make, and fallen a little in love with the dichotomy of the man who looked like nothing but sharp edges being the softest customer you’d had all day. There was nothing rushed about his motions, no desperate need to get his drink and get away, no anger at having waited for so long.)

(He’d been ready to pay, too, no fumbling with his wallet or money; he’d tapped his card, easy and breezy and all lemon squeezy, but he’d left a tip in change, dropped almost thoughtlessly into the jar. He’d collected his cup with the smallest upturn to his lips, a tilt of his head, and then he’d left, other customers parting before him like the Red Sea.)

(The only thing that’s changed over the months is that the iced coffees of summer have changed into hot Americanos for the cooler months, autumn and now almost-winter, warding off the chill in the air. Everything else is the same; his dark eyes and low voice and patient smile, small but ever present, pressed lightly into the surprisingly soft line of his mouth.)

(So, yeah. Yoongi is your favourite customer. Even if you’ve barely spoken, really, the two of you dancing through the same short script each time he comes in—the longest conversation you’ve had so far is the one where you’d tentatively asked if he’d like a rewards card, and after a moment of contemplation, he’d quietly agreed.)

(You like to think that you’re Yoongi’s favourite server, too. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but—)

(Taehyung had been stunned into speechlessness, because, to quote his words exactly: “I tried getting him to sign up for a card last time and I swear he just pretended he couldn’t hear me? He just straight up didn’t respond? What?”)

(—you know Yoongi likes you at least a little bit.)

Anyway. You’re getting off the point. Paradise is a decent place to work, the people are nice, and the building is pretty and airy and welcoming and warm, toasty and cosy in the upcoming cold of winter. It’s one of the things that keeps people coming back, that lovely atmosphere.

Another thing that people apparently love about Paradise is the constantly changing menu. It’s not enough to have seasonal menus, no—you need to have weekly specials, apparently, to keep people interested.  It’s like a gachapon, but instead of cute little capsule toys, it’s a random mix of concoctions that are hit or miss.

“Well, I liked the Peachy Keen Jelly Bean,” Taehyung says, around a mouthful of sweet bread, still chewing his way through the panettone.

“You’d be the only one,” you reply, swiping a cloth over the counters and crinkling your nose  at the pile of coffee grounds you gather. “Iced peach tea with blackberry and vanilla and cherry and watermelon syrup has got to be one of the worst things we’ve ever served.”

That had definitely been one of the misses. This week’s special, though, is far more palatable, if incredibly sweet—Crystal Snow, a white chocolate mocha with whipped cream, dusted with powdered sugar, and a crystallised sugar stick to stir in. Sugar on sugar on sugar, basically. (Your teeth ache just thinking about it.) 

But there’s always something so fun about making the winter specials, no matter how sugary they are; the smell of the sticky syrups, the swirl of cream to top off the cup, the dusting of cocoa or cinnamon, everything mulled in the sweet warmth of winter. Even if the drink you’re making is questionable, you get so excited about it, genuinely enthusiastic when you recommend them to customers, carrying everyone into the spirit of the upcoming holidays. You’d hardly describe making coffee a billion times a day fun—it’s pretty exhausting, actually—but you’ve always had a weird affection for the winter menu and the weekly specials alongside it.

You don’t upsell the drinks because you have to. You do it because you want to.

(You’re pretty good at it too. Not a flex: just a fact. Your customer service is on point.)

The only person you’ve never tried to persuade into trying something new is Yoongi. He might not be rude or short tempered, but he clearly knows what he wants, and you hate the idea of ruining the easy flow of his visits. You’re not about to embarrass yourself by asking Mr No-Cream-Or-Sugar if he’d like a drink that's nothing but cream and sugar. Asking about the rewards card had been nerve-wracking enough, even if it had been worth it for the genuinely-unintentional-but-definitely-not-unpleasant brushing of your fingers when you’d handed the card over to him.

(Okay. Look. Yoongi is patient and pleasant and polite and cute. You never thought that you’d crush on a customer, but here you are. He just… oozes masculinity in an understated, self-assured way that has you internally swooning. He looks intimidating and serious but when he smiles his eyes go soft-soft-soft, his voice a low rumble as he gives you his gentle thank you, and everything about him is just so… attractive. Even the way he holds his coffee is hot, fingers loose around the lid as he makes his way out of the café, your eyes tracing every motion as he goes. Like. Come on. Of course you’re crushing on him.)

(Just a little bit, though. Just a little bit. It’s just an itty bitty crush. A teeny weeny crush.) 

The bell above the door chimes. Your kneejerk reaction is to snap your head over to see who it is—but you hold it together, instead letting your head turn at a normal, natural pace. It’s just an unfamiliar woman, rearranging the tassels of her long scarf with one hand and holding her phone with the other as the door swings shut, and you deflate.

(... It’s a small crush, you swear. It’s not like this is around the normal time Yoongi appears and you’d thought it was going to be him. Nope. Definitely not that.)

As the woman lingers near the counter, eyes flicking between her phone and the chalkboard menu on the wall above your head, Taehyung finishes licking the panettone crumbs off his fingers.

“It’s Tuesday,” he states solemnly.

“I know?”

“It’s just past two o’clock,” he continues.

“I know,” you repeat, glancing at him quizzically. “You told me what the time was less than five minutes ago.”

“I did.”

The bell chimes again. This time, a gaggle of giggling girls come bubbling into the café, cutting you off before you can ask what Taehyung is trying to say. You go to flick your cloth at him before thinking better of it, not wanting to rain dark roast everywhere.

“Go wash your hands,” you say, just as the scarfed woman approaches the counter, ready to order. A bright smile splits your face, voice rising into its usual peppy Customer Service tone. “Hi, welcome to Paradise! How can I help you today?”

She barely glances up from her phone as she orders, asking for a latte macchiato and croissant, a distracted ‘no thanks’ when you ask if she’s interested in this week’s special. Oh well. The girls behind her, though, all seem incredibly excited when they catch wind of it; they all eagerly listen as you describe what a Crystal Snow is, your eyes lighting up as you mime piping the cream and dusting the sugar on top, laughing when they ask if they can buy extra sugar sticks to take home, because of course they can, you’d be happy to do that for them, would they like those in to-go bags? Yes, the bags are cute, aren’t they, the snowflakes are lovely, you agree.

Taehyung’s just finished wiping the steam wand when you give him the next order. You see the way his face crumples before his brows lift and his lips purse, pleading as he looks at you with big eyes, and you just roll your own eyes affectionately.

“Yes, yes, I’ll make them even though you’re meant to be on the bar, it’s fine,” you say, and Taehyung’s whole face lights up.

You’ve worked with Taehyung long enough by now to know that it takes him until at least Wednesday to memorise how to make whatever that week’s special is. And there’s not a queue, so you don’t mind taking over, pulling espresso shots and steaming milk and pouring everything together, puffing air in Taehyung’s face when he peers at your cream swirling technique. (No matter how many times you’ve tried to teach him, he’s never been able to get it right, usually just farting a mess of cream out of the nozzle and hoping for the best. Results are… mixed.) Maybe the flourish you put into dusting the sugar on top is unnecessary, but, hey. It’s fun. You smile to yourself as you give a small flick of the wrist over each drink, powdered sugar floating down like snow, and, done.

You don’t like to toot your own horn but the drinks come out Instagram perfect, each latte glass set on a tiny napkin on a saucer, sugar stick on one side, and you take a moment to admire your work.

“They’re so pretty,” Taehyung says, and your smile grows wider.

The girls all agree, cooing over the drinks in a way that only makes your smile grow even more, wide on your face. You watch as they squirrel themselves away in a corner, talking and laughing and nibbling their food and sipping at their drinks, pleased at the way their eyes widen at the first taste.

Yeah, it’s the small things that makes your time here good. Being a barista is a thankless job most of the time, as relaxed as Paradise usually is, so you try to appreciate the small things. Like having fun when you make a drink, for example. Making nice customers happy. (Having cute regulars that you can quietly ogle.)

Actually, on the note of cute regulars—

“Your 2:15 appointment is here.”

You tear your attention away from the table of girls at the sound of Taehyung’s voice. “My what—?”

There’s someone in front of the glass display, hunched as they slowly and quietly peruse the selection of pastries and food inside—and you realise with a jolt that it’s Yoongi. You have no idea how long he’s been there, so distracted with patting yourself on the back for making a few nice drinks; oh, God, what if Yoongi had seen your pleased expression? Do you look smug? You probably look smug. Great, now he probably thinks that you’re a self-obsessed clown, honking your nose like some sort of narcissist. 

“You’re spiralling,” Taehyung points out mildly, voice low enough that Yoongi doesn't hear.

His surprisingly perceptive comment snaps you out of aforementioned spiralling, and after shaking yourself off, you glance over at him. “Why didn’t you serve him?”

He shrugs. “He didn’t seem like he wanted to be served so I just left him to it.”

To be fair to Taehyung, he’s not wrong. Yoongi is staring intently at a slice of carrot cake—even if he’s never ordered any before—and it’s not until you move to your usual spot behind the till that his attention finally rises, meeting your gaze with his deep, dark eyes.

Your inner schoolgirl feels like she needs to sit down. Your entire stomach and chest is a looping mess of frantic butterflies after making eye contact with the cute boy who you’re crushing on, but you’ve got a great poker face; you’ve worked as a barista long enough that you’re good at shoving your real feelings down, none of your internal turmoil playing across your face as you smile. Customer service mode activate.

“Hi, and welcome back to Paradise. What can I get for you today? The usual? Large Americano, to go, for Yoongi?”

You’re a little softer than you would be with other customers, a little more subdued, dialing down how upbeat you normally are to match Yoongi’s level. His lips lift almost imperceptibly, the faintest smile playing across his mouth, and it takes all your strength for your knees to not immediately buckle. 

“Hi,” he says. His voice is soft and low, faintest drawl at the end of his words, and yep, just your weekly reminder that you’re enamoured with him. Cool. “Yes, please, that would be great.”

He already has his card ready, you know he does. He always does; card to pay, loyalty card to swipe, tip to drop in the jar, quick and smooth and easy. This is normally where you’d rattle off the price—as if he doesn’t already know what it is—but you pause, thinking about how intent he’d been on the pastry display, as uncharacteristic as that is.

“Did you… want something to eat, too? I couldn’t, um, help noticing that you were eyeing up the carrot cake?”

Yoongi blinks, wispy lashes fluttering. You can see the muted surprise that flashes across his face, and you wonder if you’ve misstepped, thrown off the usual rhythm of his visit. It’s an unusual step away from your regular script, an ad-lib that he wasn’t expecting.

“Uh, no, thank you,” he says. “Maybe… next time.”

He’s polite as ever, thankfully. You’re not surprised at his answer but you do have to wonder why he was looking at the cake so closely if he hadn’t planned on getting anything; you know he likes getting served by you the most, if the evidence over the months means anything at all, but you don’t think he’d stare at cake just so he would avoid Taehyung. You’re making assumptions based on the fact he just drinks black coffee and literally nothing else, but you’ve guessed he doesn’t have a sweet tooth. (The only time he’s ever ordered food had been two months prior when he’d asked for a single croissant, and nothing since. Taehyung still talks about the croissant sometimes.) 

Well, it doesn't really matter. If he doesn't want cake, you're not going to force it on him, and the rest of the transaction goes as normal. Yoongi hands over his rewards card, fingers long and knuckles knobbly and altogether lovely, pays for his Americano—made by Taehyung, cup wrapped in the sleeve that you’ve written Yoongi’s name on, black sharpie bleeding into the cardboard—and smiles at you both when Taehyung hands it to him across the smooth wood of the counter.

“Thanks.” He gives you that slight tilt of his head that he always does, and you smile helplessly back. 

He’s a gentleman, through and through, even if he looks as distant as ever; dressed in all black, his ripped jeans the only splash of lightness in his dark outfit. Maybe you’re biased, but no matter what he wears, he looks stylish, somehow. It’s something in his aura. All cool understated elegance and power. 

And here you are, in your cream jumper under the dark mulberry apron of your uniform, a flower blooming next to the name on your badge. All chirpy customer service, smiling broad and wide as you go through the same motions over and over with each new person that comes in. Sometimes you wonder what Yoongi thinks of you, as different as you are to him, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter—because he keeps coming back, doesn’t he?

“Have a nice day,” you say as he turns to go, and when he glances over his shoulder and says you too, smile soft and eyes softer, you know he really means it. 

(And if your eyes always trail after him once his back has turned, who’s telling?)

“You’re staring.” Taehyung’s telling, apparently.

You tear your eyes away from Yoongi, bell tinkling as the door swings shut behind him. “He’s my favourite customer,” you say. As if that explains why you were staring.

“You’ve barely spoken to him.”

“He’s my favourite customer,” you say again, emphatically. “He comes in, he gets the world’s simplest drink to make, is always polite, always leaves a tip, and he goes. Literally the perfect customer.”

 “Alright, true,” he says, as if he hadn’t considered that before now. “Cute, too.”

You sigh. A little wistful. “Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, he is.”

Taehyung opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something else when someone spills their drink on their floor with an unholy clattering sound, even if nothing breaks; without saying anything, both you and Taehyung raise your hands, eyes narrowing at each other.

"Rock, paper, scissors," you chant. Taehyung promptly loses, and the pout that forms on his lips doesn't disappear until he's finished mopping everything up.

(“Why do I always end up having to clean spillages?”

“Because you never win rock-paper-scissors. You always choose scissors, Taehyung. You literally always choose scissors.”)

The tradition of the weekly specials at Paradise is a weird one, truth be told. Each Monday whoever’s on the opening shift will enter the coffee shop and find that the board on the wall has been updated, the recipe typed up and laminated, waiting on the counter for the baristas. You all assume it’s the mysterious owner, who no one has ever seen, and no one even knows the name of, apparently.

“Someone has to know their name,” you’d said, once, back when you’d first started, only to receive a shrugs from everyone.

“I heard one of the old baristas say the owner’s name was Jackson,” Taehyung had said, and you’d just blinked at him.

“Huh?” you’d said, but Jimin had rolled his eyes and told you to ignore him, so you had.

This week’s drink is the Marshmallow World. As always, when you and Taehyung start your shift together, you read the recipe and follow it step by step to learn how to make it. Warmed milk, vanilla syrup, topped off with marshmallow fluff instead of whipped cream—not bad in theory, if you like sweet things, although it does pose one significant problem.

“It’s clogged my hole,” Taehyung says sadly.

You sputter on your own drink, desperately hacking your lungs out as you try to stop milk from going down your windpipe. “I’m-sorry-it’s-what,” you wheeze all at once, struggling for air.

Taehyung tilts his takeaway cup at you, gesturing at the lid. (All the mugs are still out back or on a rinse cycle so laziness had forced you to make do.) “My drink hole. It’s blocked,” he explains. “The fluff is getting in the way.”

So, yeah. It clogs people’s holes, apparently. But other than that, you have to admit it’s pretty nice, and if you drink it in the café (and thus out of a mug) then you’re fine. You just get into the habit of warning the customers if they order it to go and laugh about it with them and it’s all fine and dandy and everyone is happy.

It’s starting to get busier, now. The nights are getting longer and the days are getting colder and everyone’s starting to think about Christmas, which feels both close and far away, all at once. Close, because you still have presents to buy and there’s never enough time for it; and far, because the lights have yet to go up and Christmas songs aren’t dominating the radio yet and you have yet to experience the real winter rush. Students home for the holidays and families out to see Father Christmas and workers grabbing Secret Santa gifts, everyone desperate for something warm and soothing, hot and comforting in the face of the snow which has yet to fall. 

But there’s something in the air, that cool hush that lets you know it’s nearly here—the changing of the seasons, the burnt sunset colours of autumn melting into the iced blues and greys of winter. No matter if you prefer hot or cold weather, there’s something about the beauty of wintertime that’s undeniable.

And it’s a lot easier to sell something like the Marshmallow World on a day like this, the nip in the air almost solid, biting cold into the apples of your cheeks, nibbling at fingers that are so cold they feel frost-bitten. Once again, your genuine enthusiasm shines through, persuading people to give the drink a go, happy to add a shot of espresso for whoever needs it, desperate for caffeine to buoy them up through the day.

You’ve just finished laughing with a lovely old couple, wearing matching scarves and hats—awwww—waving them goodbye as they go to sit down, when you come face to face with Yoongi, blindsided by his sudden appearance. You’d been so caught up, once again, too busy giggling your way through the conversation with your other customers, able to persuade them to try one special to share alongside everything else they’ve ordered. 

“Oh. Uh. Hi,” you say. Your hand is still by your face after you’d given the couple a cute wave, and when you realise, you freeze. Flustered. Behind you, Taehyung is struggling to spoon the marshmallow fluff neatly on the vanilla steamer, making small noises of distress, but you’re too caught up in your own distress to really notice.

Once again, you have no idea how long Yoongi’s been there. You’re slipping. You’re normally aware of him as soon as he steps into the coffee shop. (You know, because you’re always aware of when a new customer steps in. Like any good barista would be.) Had he witnessed you enthusiastically waving your hands and talking about marshmallows and s'mores? Seen the way you'd grinned and laughed as you'd gotten excited over the weekly special, yet again?

Well, if he had, he doesn't seem perturbed at all. His usual smile is on his face, though you would swear it seems a little softer around the edges, almost fond. 

“Hi,” he says, and… that’s it. 

There’s no addition of his usual that would be great, and that’s when you realise you haven’t asked about his coffee. In fact, your fingers are still curled near your chin, almost like a claw. You clear your throat and let your arm fall to your side, fiddling with the tie of your apron. 

“Hi,” you repeat. Flounder for a second. Try to remember your usual line. “Large Americano?”

“Y/n.” Taehyung whines your name from the bar, loud enough that it catches your attention. “The marshmallow isn’t staying. Why do you keep recommending Marshmallow World? Why must I suffer through this torture? Every day I wake up and I make coffee—”

“Sorry, sir, one second,” you say, face scrunching in apology at Yoongi. 

“It's just Yoongi,” he replies, gentle, and your heart thuds in your chest. "You don't have to call me sir."

Your face feels warm. "Um, okay, Yoongi." You've said his name before, of course, said it dozens of times to confirm his order, but never like this—by invitation from the man himself, an acknowledgement of familiarity.

Taehyung makes another noise. Yoongi's expression turns into one of faint amusement, eyes drifting over your shoulder to your friend; when you turn around, you can see why.

The other barista’s managed to get marshmallow fluff all over the edge of the glass, on the handle of the cup, all the way up the spoon, on his fingers—everywhere except on the drink itself. It’s funny, in a sad sort of way.

“Wow.” You have no idea how he managed it, but you’re here to help. “Alright, go wash your hands, Tae. I’ve got this.”

The cup is a goner.  There’s no way you’ll be able to wipe off the sticky marshmallow. You’re acutely aware of Yoongi at the counter, able to watch your every move, but then you get distracted as you salvage Taehyung's attempt at a Marshmallow World. You just feel grateful that it’s a steamer so you can pour it into a new glass, not having to worry about layers of coffee and milk and foam; it’s a pretty easy fix. Good. (You don’t want to keep Yoongi waiting, as patient as he may be.)

It doesn’t take long to spoon the marshmallow on, whipped peaks in the sticky white, and by the time Taehyung returns you’re ready to present him with the picture perfect drink, not a single lick of fluff anywhere it shouldn’t be. You've got your hands on your hips as you survey your work proudly, and Taehyung sticks his tongue out at you.

“Witchcraft,” he says, and you laugh.

“You’re welcome,” you say. “Alright, shoo, go take this over to the table before they start wondering where it is.”

When you turn back, Yoongi’s watching you. Contemplative. You tamp down the flush that threatens to spill onto your cheeks, face burning, but before you can say anything, he speaks.

“Was that the weekly special?”

You blink. Blindsided. Yoongi’s never asked about the special before, never commented on the A-frame outside, the sign on the wall that sits next to the regular menu. No surprise there—why would someone who only drinks Americanos want to drink ninety-nine percent of the weekly specials you offer? “Um, yeah,” you say. “We’ve got the Marshmallow World this week.”

“Would you recommend it?”

You can’t help it. You light up. You love when customers ask for recommendations, and the fact that it’s Yoongi—whose blood must be made of coffee at this point—who’s asking about it? Americano Yoongi, asking about something without caffeine? Black coffee Yoongi, asking about a weekly special that’s nothing but sugar and sweetness? Something inside you switches on, a Christmas tree, all flashing lights and shimmering tinsel and excitement.

“Oh, if you like sweeter drinks, absolutely! It’s great for a cold day like today,” you gush. Maybe you should reel it in, far more exuberant than you usually are with Yoongi, but. You can’t stop. “It’s warm milk and vanilla, so it’s a lovely comfort drink, and we can add a shot of espresso too if you were wanting a little pick-me-up. And then you’ve got marshmallow fluff on top for some extra self-indulgence. We were meant to, uh, toast the top, actually, but we don’t have the necessary health and safety clearance for blowtorches. I guess you could do that at home if you really wanted to. Everyone likes toasted marshmallows, right?”

Yoongi hums, and you wonder if you’ve maybe gotten ahead of yourself. Oversold it. Maybe he was asking out of curiosity. Just because he’s asking about it doesn’t mean that he wants one—

“Can I get a Marshmallow World, please? Large, to go?”

—or maybe Yoongi is an official convert to the world of sweet drinks, changing after a lifetime of drinking unadorned, unadulterated black coffee. Holy shit. Holy shit? Holy—

“And a large Americano to go, too, please.”

(Record scratch. Freeze frame.  

Yoongi of-the-black-coffee is ordering his usual drink, and another. Both large. Too much for one person to reasonably drink before one of them got cold. He’s not ordering for one person; he’s ordering for two people. Of course Yoongi wouldn’t order something as heart-stopping as the Marshmallow World—not for himself, anyway. 

Mental maths. Two plus two is four, four plus four is eight; one large Americano and one Marshmallow World is two people. Yoongi and one other person is two people, a couple of people, a couple—

Oh, God.

A couple.

You’ve been crushing on a taken man.

You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes before you die? It’s sort of like that, but rather than remembering your life, you immediately recall every moment over the months where you’ve looked at him or thought about him with even the smallest iota of longing and you want to crawl under the counter and never come out. 

You feel weirdly guilty. Like… like you’re some sort of unintentional homewrecker. Even though, you know, you thought Yoongi was single and you haven’t made a single move on him and nor had you had any plans to. The guilt bubbles up inside you anyway.

All at once, you feel immensely, incredibly embarrassed. Of course he’s taken. There’s no way he wouldn’t be, as attractive and nice as he is, and you’ve just been sat here crushing on him like a big dumb idiot. 

You are the worst.)

You manage to squeeze this internal breakdown into the span of a few seconds. You’re grateful that you have your customer service face locked on, giving nothing away—from the outside the smile looks just like that, a smile, rather than the rictus of deathly mortification it actually is, burning through you like a wildfire. 

Yoongi seems none the wiser, just patiently waiting for some sort of acknowledgement of his order. Most of your brain power is still taken up with the mish-mash of humiliation and guilt that’s roiling through you. Luckily, though, the part of your brain that’s still in the moment (trying to drag you back to the real world, shame-faced as you are) forces you to move before things get weird.

“One large Americano, one large Marshmallow World, both to go.” You tap the drinks into the till on auto-pilot, dimly noting that Taehyung’s been pulled into conversation with the old couple at their table, having delivered their drinks and food to them. It’s just you behind the counter, no one else to man the coffee machines. “Let me get those started for you.”

Luckily, making the drinks means you can turn your back to Yoongi, oscillating through the five stages of grief as you fiddle with hot milk and coffee grounds and paper cups. You always take pride in your work—especially when it comes to Yoongi—and you take even more pride now, determined to make these drinks as lovely as they can be. His Americano is fairly simple, but the Marshmallow World requires a bit more finesse, and you lavish attention on the fluff, swirling it beautifully, even though you know it’ll stick to the lid anyway. 

(Okay, listen. Whoever this person Yoongi is seeing must be as nice as he is. They both deserve nice drinks.)

There’s something sweet about it, actually. Before the lids go on, you spent a second staring down at the drinks and the juxtaposition between them; black coffee and white marshmallow, bitter and sweet, night and day. It’s lovely, really, these two opposing things coming together. You wonder what Yoongi’s partner is like. Exuberant and bright, rather than his subdued warmth? A balance, yin and yang, opposite but complementary. 

(Isn’t that a nice thing to think about? Finding someone who’s different to you but matches you so well?)

You firmly press the lids into place, making sure they’re secure. The protective cardboard sleeve of Yoongi’s Americano has his name—the name you’ve memorised, written out countless times—while the Marshmallow World has a scrawled happy face, and an enjoy! on it, for this mysterious person who likes sweet drinks. You do sincerely hope they enjoy it. You really do.

“The fluff blocks the hole,” you warn, sliding the cardboard tray for both drinks carefully across the counter. “It’s probably a better idea to just take the lid off.”

Something flickers across Yoongi’s face, too fast for you to identify. But then he nods, lifting the tray up with equally careful hands. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. 

He’s always polite to everyone, Taehyung and the other baristas, but he seems to smile at you the most. He’s smiling at you now, curling at the corners of his lips, and you smile back, fighting through ten layers of embarrassment and self-inflicted shame to do so. Just because he smiles at you the most doesn’t mean anything. You can smile at people and not have it be weird; it doesn’t mean you return their ill-fated attraction.

Why, oh why, oh why.

By the time Taehyung returns to the counter, having escaped the chatty, kind clutches of the elderly couple, Yoongi is long gone. Your fellow barista finds you crouched down in front one of the cupboards with your head in your hands.

“Y/n?” He sounds incredibly concerned. “Are you okay? Do you have a headache? Are you sick?”

You let out a quiet noise, a mix between a whale dying and a hippo trying to swallow porridge, muffled into your palms. “I’m such a doughnut,” you say. “Just an absolute doughnut.”

Taehyung crouches beside you. “A glazed doughnut or a jam doughnut?”

Your hands drop away from your face as you think. “Plain,” you say, eventually. “Unglazed. No toppings or fillings.” A little sad and disappointing. It seems fitting. 

Taehyung puts a hand on your shoulder, warm and comforting. “Do you want to talk about it?”

You feel embarrassed all over again, thinking about admitting your (now-squashed) crush to your friend. It was stupid in the first place, crushing on a customer, especially as you’d barely spoken to him; Yoongi might be cute, and nice, but your crush was silly and dumb and you’d been silly and dumb not to think that he was already in a relationship.

“I’m fine,” you say. “Just going through it. And by ‘it’ I mean life generally, you know?”

Taehyung makes a noise of understanding, patting your shoulder. “Big mood,” he says sombrely. He always knows what to say, empathetic to a fault.

“Uh,” a customer says, craning over the counter to see the two of you. “Sorry to interrupt, but can I get a refill on my coffee, please?”

That effectively kills the conversation, which is good. Keep yourself busy and distracted. By the time you see Yoongi next week, this crush will be dead and gone and you’ll be fine. Just fine. Absolutely fine.

He’s dyed his hair.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon, the café is full of people, and Yoongi has dyed his hair.

You’d spent all of last Tuesday alternating between all-consuming guilt and embarrassment, Taehyung catching you with your head in your hands in one moment and furiously cleaning the steam wand the next, channeling your tumult of emotions into anything that will distract you. 

It had worked. Mostly. You’ve had a week’s worth of time since, to get over this month’s long crush, your brain consistently reminding you that Yoongi is in a relationship, with someone who’s probably lovely and attractive and all around just wonderful (just like him). You remind yourself about this every time you find coffee grounds under your nails, or notice milk flecked on your apron, soured and off-white after a day of work; your life isn’t a meet-cute, and you’re not the cute barista who falls in love with the cute regular. You’re the tired barista who makes more cups of coffee in a day than most people probably drink in a year, and Yoongi is the cute regular who’s already in a long term relationship and comes to Paradise just because he likes the dark roast you use. That’s as far as it will go, because this is real life, and not a romance film or novel. (Even if you wished that it was.)

You’ve come to terms with it. Really, you have. But then he has to step into the coffee shop looking like that, his hair bleached so blond it almost looks white, silver hoops in his ears, and he’s still dressed in dark clothes but he’s wearing glasses, no, this isn’t a drill, Yoongi’s dyed his hair, he’s all light and dark, soft and sharp, and you want to crouch behind the counter again. Because he looks so good and of course he’s in a relationship because he’s hot, and you feel dumb for not having realised it sooner.

You can’t hide behind the counter, though. There’s a queue of people, all waiting for your attention and your time, and it’s still just you and Taehyung; none of your usual Christmas temps are back yet, still away at uni, hence the we’re hiring! posters that are up for all the customers to see (and mostly ignore). The seasons are changing and the weeks are passing and the really eager people are starting to think about Christmas shopping; you swear you don’t even need a calendar, able to trace how close you are to Christmas just based on the amount of foot traffic the coffee shop gets. You’re definitely hitting peak.

But it’s fine. You have this down to a fine art. You and Taehyung are both good on the till and scarily efficient at making drinks and plating food, dancing past each other with an ease that only comes with time spent working together and friendship alongside.

People aren’t ordering the weekly special as much, either, not today. You can’t blame them. Candy Cane Dreams is a white hot chocolate, flavoured with mint and coloured green, topped with whipped cream and sprinkles of candy cane bark and red and green drizzle too; it’s… pretty overwhelming. So it means you don’t have to take over for Taehyung from the bar, focusing on smiling at customers and soothing them after their wait, taking their orders and shuffling them along as quickly as you can. You keep a smile plastered on your face as Taehyung pulls espresso shots and grabs tea bags and heats milk, routine and familiar.

When Yoongi steps up to the counter, you’ve barely had time to mentally prepare yourself, so focused on serving everyone else in the queue; it feels like a slap to the face, a kick to the knees, but then you take one deep breath and exhale. Long, deep, slow, forcing air out of your lungs and thoughts out of your mind, and you smile.

You’ve been so careful up until this point, wanting to keep Yoongi happy, wary of misstepping—but he’s just a regular customer. You feel more confident, now, less worried about breaking this tenuous thing you thought you’d had; less worried about what you’re doing being construed as some weird, roundabout way of flirting, because. You know. He’s in a relationship, so it doesn’t matter either way. He’s definitely not interested. You can talk to him like you would anyone else. 

So you say: “You dyed your hair.”

And, just like you suspected, Yoongi doesn’t seem bothered that you’ve broken your usual script. “Oh, yeah.” He reaches up, touches his head, as if he’d forgotten. “I did.”

“It looks nice,” you continue, because it does.

He’s smiling back at you. He looks pleased; maybe a little bashful, even, as surprising as that is. “Thanks,” he says, warm and genuine. (The tiny gremlin of a crush that’s still lurking in your soul lets out a wistful sigh.) “Can I get a large Americano and a—” he squints at the board— “large Candy Cane Dream, please?”

(One plus one is two, Yoongi and his other half, the sugar to his coffee.)

“Sure!” Your voice is bright. “I’m guessing the Marshmallow World went over well?”

There’s a brief beat of silence, but you don’t notice, too focused on typing Yoongi’s order into the till.

“Yeah, it was great,” he says after that moment of quiet, and you smile. Good. You’re glad they enjoyed it. 

“I’m really happy to hear that,” you say, genuine and bright. 

“What’s actually in the, ah, Candy Cane Dreams?” Yoongi asks, and you laugh, leaning forward conspiratorially.

“It’s horrendous,” you say in a low voice, as if you’re sharing a secret. “Have you ever seen green hot chocolate before?”

You’ve never spoken to Yoongi like this, easy and light, and it’s… nice. He gives no indication of surprise at your sudden friendliness after months of barely talking. If anything he looks pleased, and at one point he even gives you a smile you’ve never seen before, wide and wonderful, flashing his teeth and gums. (The crush gremlin rattles at your ribcage like prison bars, trying desperately to escape, but you don’t give it a chance.)

“Alright, let me just swap with the other barista, he’s still not gotten the Candy Cane Dreams recipe down.”

You hear a suspicious crunch as you make your way over to Taehyung. He turns to you with a guilty smile, edged with sugar, munching on shards of candy cane while his back is to the customers.

“You’re terrible,” you say affectionately. “Go take over on the till, I have a special to make.”

Taehyung glances over, sees Yoongi making his way down to the collection point. “Huh. Alright.”

The Candy Cane Dreams recipe might be a questionable one, but it’s definitely fun to make (watching the white hot chocolate turn green makes you feel like a kid all over again, mixing shampoos together in your bathroom and calling them potions), and maybe you’re overly generous with the candy cane bark, giving Yoongi’s beau more to nibble on and enjoy. It’s not Christmas yet but you’re already in a giving mood, so sue you. 

“Here you go.” You slide the drinks towards him, the man busy reading one of the vacancy fliers, eyes flicking away from the poster when you appear. Your lips quirk up. “Looking for a job?”

You’re expecting a huff of a laugh, a small shake of the head, but he answers you seriously. “Not me, but I have a friend who is,” he says, reaching to take the tray.

You realise your hands are still curled around the cardboard; you quickly pull away so that there’s no chance your hands will brush. (You might have shoved your crush down as far as it will go, but you have to be careful with your weak, gooey heart.) 

“We could do with any help, honestly. Your friend is more than welcome to apply.” You glance over at the queue, which is small but ever present, and you know it’ll only get worse as time goes on. “And, hey, if you ever decide for a change of pace from whatever it is you do, we’d be glad to have you, too.”

This gets a laugh from him, a warm burst of sound. (The gremlin points out that this is the first time you’ve heard him laugh, really laugh, a little raspy and a little quiet and altogether lovely; you beat the gremlin back with a stick.) “I’m better at drinking coffee than I am at making it,” Yoongi says, eyes soft with lingering amusement. “I’ll leave that to the experts.”

You might have gone off script, but the nod he gives you is his usual one, that familiar tilt of the head. “See you next week?” His eyes are dark, dark and deep, and it’s so hard not to fall into them, to fall all over again.

“See you next week,” you echo, hoping the smile you plaster on your face doesn’t look as forced as it feels, as you struggle once more. Yoongi is just nice, okay? He's just being nice, but still. He needs to let a girl breathe.

(He needs to let the gremlin of her crush wither away, instead of making it threaten to come back as strong as before, fuelled by his smile and his eyes and his everything.)

(... maybe you’re not as over this crush as you thought you were.)

It seems like the we’re hiring! posters actually worked.

“I’m Jungkook,” says the new starter, all crooked smiles and warm eyes and thighs so thick they threaten to split the trousers of the café’s uniform, ties of his apron emphasising his small waist.

(“Good lord,” Taehyung says faintly.)

It’s the last week of November and even though Jungkook is still learning the ropes, he’s a massive help, and you know he’ll be a lifesaver over Christmas. He’s eager, learns quickly, and gets stuck right in, material of his shirt straining across his shoulder blades when he rips a bag of coffee beans open with his bare hands, rather than having to use scissors like you or Taehyung. 

Taehyung watches with stars in his eyes as Jungkook pours the beans into the grinder. You cover your smile by sipping at one of the espresso shots Jungkook has pulled—full-bodied and dark, rich in your mouth. 

“This is really good, Jungkook,” you say. He looks over, eyes squeezing into a smile.

“Thought it would be,” he says, and you can’t help but huff a laugh into the tiny espresso cup. He’s cocky and competitive, telling you that he’d never made coffee before but he was going to do a better job than any of the other baristas here. He’s too endearing to come across as arrogant, though, and you have to admit that the coffee is good. (Not as good as yours or Taehyung’s, of course, but still. Pretty good.)

Taehyung coos at him and reaches out to shamelessly squeeze his bicep. “Jungkookie is a natural barista.”

Jungkook’s cocky smile turns equal parts pleased and flustered. You continue to sip at the espresso as Taehyung moons over him, then the bell above the door rings, and the mooning temporarily is put on hold. (Temporarily, because Taehyung continues to moon over him for the rest of the shift, insisting on doing the bulk of his training, which is fine by you.)

It’s the 1st of December tomorrow, so not only do you have to clean after the café is locked up, you have to put out all the Christmas decorations, too. But it’s more fun that it is work, the three of you dragging the tree out of the storage room and decorating it with a menagerie of tinsel and baubles; Jungkook lifts Taehyung so he can get the star on the tree, wrapping his arms around Taehyung’s waist and hoisting him up effortlessly, leaving your friend with a pleased smile on his face.

Jungkook is new, only on his second shift, but he’s slotted in so easily. He laughs at Taehyung when he wiggles his butt along to the Christmas songs you've put on to play, and he helps steady the stepladder as you string garlands of snowflakes on the ceiling, even if he doesn’t really need to. 

He absently readjusts the reindeer headband Taehyung had unearthed from the storage room and proudly placed on his head. “Yoongi-hyung talks a lot about this place,” Jungkook comments, offhand.

If you’d heard this a few weeks ago, you probably would have fallen off the stepladder, inner gremlin grabbing your heart with both hands and squeezing tight-tight-tight. As it is you only pause for a moment, one of the larger snowflakes cradled in your palm, before you go back to your job of hanging them up. 

“So you’re the friend he mentioned that needed a job,” you say. 

“That’s me.” Jungkook grins, boyish and bright, and you laugh. “He really, really likes this café. Wouldn’t shut up about it, even before he told me that you were hiring.”

You can’t imagine Yoongi gushing about a café to his friends, but then again, he clearly is passionate about his coffee. Jungkook will know him better than you, having a real friendship rather than this patron-and-customer back-and-forth that you’ve had, so who are you to imagine what’s normal for Yoongi and what isn’t? You didn’t even know he was in a relationship, after all. You don’t know anything about the guy, really. 

“Well, we appreciate his custom,” you say. “I know Yoongi is the one who actually comes in, but you can thank his other half, too, and I hope they enjoy their drinks as well.”

You’re too busy hanging the garland to see the way Jungkook’s face twists. 

“Huh?”

“You know. Yoongi always comes in for his Americano and the weekly special for his partner,” you say.

You’re focused on stepping down the ladder without falling to see the expression on Jungkook’s face, nose scrunched and lips pursed, like there’s something he’s smelled that he really doesn’t like.

“Did he say that to you? That it was for someone else?”

“Hm?” You pause in grabbing another string of snowflakes, glancing up. “Oh, no, I just worked it out, you know? Yoongi is a religious coffee drinker, why else would he order something that’s basically hot sugar water? I think it’s cute,” you add, belatedly. “That he always comes in to grab something for them, too.” 

(You wish you had someone to do that for you.)

There’s a beat of silence. Jungkook’s holding the stepladder, ready to move it, staring at you in a way that’s weirdly intense. “I see,” he says, like that isn’t weird or mysterious at all.

Then he drags the stepladder’s rubber feet across the floor with such a loud noise that Taehyung startles, bauble falling out of his hand and shattering. Jungkook, of course, profusely apologises and insists on cleaning it up—but not before making sure Taehyung is okay, of course, grabbing his hands and looking over them, as if the bauble had broken in his palms and not the floor. 

Taehyung looks immensely pleased. You just smile quietly to yourself, roll your eyes lightly, and go back to hanging snowflakes as Jungkook speaks to Taehyung, soft and low.

You think your favourite thing about training a new starter is witnessing their reaction to the weekly special.

“So,” Jungkook says, slowly. “You put in the whole gingerbread man—gumdrops and icing and all—and just blend it?

“Yep.” Taehyung’s reply is cheery. “Straight in and whizz it all up.”

This week, it’s You Can’t Catch Me, I’m the Gingerbread Frappé which is a) probably the longest name known to mankind and b) probably the most questionable name known to mankind and c) who orders a frappé in December?

These thoughts are clearly playing across Jungkook’s face as Taehyung coaxes him to drop the gingerbread man into the blender, and you’re too busy enjoying the consternation on Jungkook’s face to notice someone stepping up to the counter—until they clear their throat, that is, and you all turn. 

“Hi,” Yoongi says.

“Oh! Hi,” Taehyung says.

“Hyung! Look!” Jungkook says.

“Jungkook, wait—” you say.

“Whirr,” the lidless blender says.

It’s chaos. Frappé ends up everywhere, splattered over the counter and the floor, splashed across the wine-red aprons of both of your fellow baristas, as close to the blender as they were—saving you from any of the sugary fallout, unwitting human shields.

There’s a beat of silence, where you all stare at each other—

And then Yoongi laughs.

You’ve never seen Yoongi laugh this loudly, eyes squeezed so hard you wonder if he can even see, almost cackling as he laughs at Jungkook’s expression, joyful and loud and free. It’s another dimension to him, another new part you witness as Jungkook wipes gingerbread and ice off his face and Taehyung stares at the mess spattered across his hands and arms.

It makes you think of a paper crane. Yoongi is this unfinished thing in your mind, each new thing you learn about him another fold that you add, a flat sheet of paper turned into something entirely and wholly new. You wish that it weren’t so alluring, watching it come together, finding out more and more about this man you’ve technically known for months, but only recently started to get to know.

(You wish that it wasn’t so easy to keep falling for him.)

Once the counter is cleaned, both Jungkook and Taehyung retreat to replace their aprons, leaving you—once again—alone with Yoongi. He’d stopped laughing to tease Jungkook, to gently rib him, but you can see the smile that’s etched on his face, the echoes of mirth written across all his features.

“We usually train the baristas to keep the lid on, I swear,” you say, and Yoongi’s face splits into another smile.

“I was going to say that it’s an unorthodox blending technique,” and you can’t help but smile back at this, even if you’ve been trying not to laugh. Professionalism barely wins out, your lips trembling as you try to hold your giggling back, but Yoongi spots it anyway, looking pleased, like he’s accomplished something by getting you to (nearly) laugh.

You’re not laughing when you have to make one of the special frappés, though. You stare at the gingerbread man as you hold him above the blender, at his cheery iced face and his cute little buttons (not the gumdrop buttons), and brace yourself to drop him.

“I’m so sorry,” you whisper, and let him go, before quickly slamming the lid on top and turning the blender on so you don’t have to look at the betrayal you’ve just committed. 

When you turn, Yoongi has an expression of sympathy on his face; for you or the gingerbread man, you can’t tell, but his face smooths the second he notices you looking at him, blinking innocently, as if there’s nothing unusual going on. It’s disarming, seeing that expression on his face, when you’d gotten used to seeing him act more reserved, but it’s cute.

(It is cute, whether you’re crushing on him or not. It’s just a statement of fact, okay? It’s nothing more than that. Even if that tiny gremlin of a crush still lives in your chest, scuffing its feet against your heart, reminding you of its presence when you least need it.)

(It digs its heels in when you put the frappé and Americano side by side, nestled snug in their cardboard tray. You slide it towards Yoongi and you’re a little too slow, fingers brushing his when he reaches for them; you’re surprised by how quickly he moves, how eager he seems to be reaching for his order, fingertips dragging across the back of your knuckles, and the gremlin kicks your heart, pulse rising just at that glancing touch. Even if you know it’s fruitless, useless, you can’t help but like Yoongi anyway.)

(“See you next week,” he says, and you can’t do anything but smile helplessly back.)

You normally love snow. You love waking up to the sight of it, pure and pristine white, adding another dimension to your familiar world—you love snowball fights and snowmen and snow angels, even if it all leaves you feeling cold, chilled right to the bone, nose running and hands freezing. The best part about winter is getting warm again, the season of throw blankets and hot water bottles, knitwear and scarves, tea and hot cocoa, all cosy and lovely and wonderful.

It’s a bit different when you have to work all day, though. You watch as the snow on the streets outside is threatened by the spray of salt and a thousand spinning car wheels and busy feet, ice turned to slush water; for now the snow is winning, though, and judging from the weather forecast, you think that’ll be the case for the rest of the day. You hope it lasts through to tomorrow, too; by the time you get home you’ll be too tired and it’ll be too dark to play in the snow, and it leaves you feeling disappointed and sad. 

(Winter is lovely but it can be a hollow season, too, something about the leafless trees and fogged windows making everything feel like an empty dream.)

At least Paradise is warm, even if you’re cooped up inside, safe from the still-falling snow that keeps trying to turn the world into an untouched, frozen wonderland. It’s quiet in the coffee shop today. Only the bravest of people have ventured out into the not-a-blizzard-but-basically-a-blizzard, plastered against radiators and putting drinks to their faces, letting hot steam heat their cold cheeks.

It’s why you’re both surprised and unsurprised when Yoongi appears, bell chiming above his head as the door swings shut and he stamps his feet on the front mat, knocking snow off his boots. He somehow looks disgruntled and soft all at the same time, a royal blue beanie on his head forcing his fringe down to sit messily over his eyes, bundled up warm even if his face is scrunched up and his cheeks are red from the cold.

“I hate cold weather,” he tells you once he reaches the counter, gloves peeled off his fingers so he can reach for his wallet, his nose tinged pink as he sniffs.

You proffer him a box of tissues. “You look like you need it,” you say gently, and he smiles at you, a warm hearth in the cold winter.

“Thank you.” His voice is equally as gentle as yours, and something aches in your chest.

It’s just you behind the counter right now, so you take Yoongi’s order and make the drinks too—one large Americano and one large Latteggnog (a basic latte made with eggnog instead of milk, rich and thick and creamy), this week’s special: everyone’s favourite Christmas drink, but with a twist of coffee. 

The quiet gives you time to think. Jungkook and Taehyung are out back, the older barista coming up with the most ridiculous excuses to take them away from the counter; you don’t mind that they’re taking the time ‘counting the coffee beans’, as deserted as the café is. 

The café is practically empty and Yoongi hates the cold but here he is, venturing into the ice and snow to get this person he cares about the drink they want, because they’re that special to him. (You hope they realise how lucky they are.)

You’re normally okay being single. Don’t really think about it. But there’s something about today, this moment, that has you reflecting; Taehyung has this budding thing with Jungkook, Yoongi has this steady thing with his love, and here you are, by yourself, alone. It’s hard to summon up your usual energy, going through the motions as you make the drinks. You tilt your head forward, dusting nutmeg on the eggnog latte, watching the way the sprinkle of spice settles delicately and softly in the foam. No flourish, no flick of the wrist, not today.

(There’s two cups in front of you now, but later, when you’re home, there’s just going to be one. Yours. Yours, and no one else’s.)

(When you get home, you’re going to do what any self-respecting single person would do: order too much takeaway, rewatch The Good Place, get emotional over Eleanor and Chidi’s relationship—they’re so different but they’re so perfect for each other, why can’t you have that?—mope for a bit, rewatch The Princess Bride, get emotional over Westley and Buttercup—where’s your cute farmboy who saves you from an evil prince?—mope a bit more, before finally climbing into bed and hugging a pillow to your chest in the space of having someone else there. You know. Perfectly normal single person things.)

When you turn to Yoongi, drinks ready and raring to go, you’ve forced a Customer Service Smile onto your face. They say that just the act of smiling makes you happier, right? Maybe if you smile hard enough, you’ll cheer up, chasing away this sudden sadness that lingers in the back of your throat, scratching at your lungs like black ice.

“Here you go!” Your voice seems too loud for the quiet hush of the café, but you roll with it anyway. “Enjoy your drinks!”

Yoongi takes them from you, hands carefully cupped around the tray, but his eyes don’t leave your face. He doesn’t return your smile, as convincing as it should be (even Taehyung struggles to tell between your real smile and your work smile, sometimes); he stands for a moment, looking at you.

You think he’s about to say something when he clearly thinks better of it. He tilts his head, like he always does, but you’d swear his expression is tinged with concern. “Thanks,” he says. Pauses. “The roads are really icy. Get home safe, okay Y/n?”

Blink, blink. Your eyelashes flutter. You suddenly realise that he’s never said your name out loud, never had a need to, even if he must have known it all along from the badge on your chest. It sounds so good in his mouth, soft and safe.

 “Oh,” you say, slow with surprise. “Thank you. I will. You, too.”

Yoongi nods again, as if to himself, before he turns to go.

He stops one more time before he goes. He stands at the open door, glances over his shoulder before he steps out, dark eyes meeting yours, as if checking that you’re still there, still tethered to the ground. Seems satisfied when he finds that you are. He gives you one last smile, all soft around the edges—that’s something you know intimately about Yoongi, that he’s soft through and through, even if he can look sharp, as cold as the ice outside—and then he goes, back into the falling snow to deliver a steaming sip of warmth into the hands of the person he loves.

(Your heart aches.)

It’s the week before Christmas. The whole world has that feeling it always does at this time of year—excited and bright, if a little frantic, the hanging lights in the city a backdrop to people’s last minute shopping, their breaths pluming out into the air as they rush around in the cold. The whole world feels full of life, that final push towards the end of the year; the hearth fire of Christmas before that weird in between before the new year, that held breath of potential, before the clock ticks over and the world is thrown into the next year.

Paradise has been busy. It’s like summer, only instead of sundresses and shorts, everyone is in knitwear and scarves, shivering as they wait to be served, desperate for a drink to warm them up, something to eat to fill their bellies. You spend more time in the coffee shop than you do at home, pulling overtime shifts to help your fellow baristas out—everyone thinks Christmas is a time of relaxation and coming together, but it doesn’t feel like that when you work in a customer facing job, oh no. It’s just non-stop busyness and being rushed off your feet.

(You’d barely had a chance to speak to Yoongi, café full when he’d stepped in, your pace frenetic as you’d danced around behind the counter with Taehyung and Jungkook; you’d slid his drinks towards him, his Americano and the special, and maybe your smile had looked more harrowed than you thought because he’d caught your hand and squeezed it.

“I hope you get a chance to rest over Christmas,” he’d said, concerned and sincere, as you’d stood in stunned silence, not expecting that almost-intimate touch, gentle against your skin.

“I will,” you’d said eventually. Yoongi had seemed to suddenly realise he was still touching you, fingers clasped around yours, and he’d withdrawn quickly, giving you a smile that felt like a whispered secret, before leaving you to deal with the ever-growing queue.)

Suffice to say, it’s been a long week, and you’re tired, and your feet hurt after all the running around you’ve been doing, and you just want to go home. You just need to finish the close, need to finish setting everything up for the open tomorrow, need to finish cleaning everything, and then you can get some sleep.

At least, that’s what you thought. Instead, you’re standing across from Jungkook and staring at him incredulously. You can feel a headache coming on.

“Wait.” You pinch the bridge of your nose. “What do you mean, we need to deliver some coffee?”

You don’t know if Jungkook is being deliberately obtuse, but he just stares at you as if you’re the one talking nonsense right now, and not him. “We have a customer order to deliver,” he says.

“Yes, I gathered that,” you say. “I just mean, why did no one tell me sooner?”

Paradise doesn’t do deliveries, as such. You cater for events, and you technically do deliveries then, but it’s less ‘one coffee to go’ and more ‘enough sandwiches and pastries and bagels and coffee to feed an entire office’. It’s not that you can’t bring someone their order directly, it’s more that you just… don’t.

“Taehyung took the order,” Jungkook says, as if that explains everything.

You pinch the bridge of your nose again. You can’t ask Tae about it, the other man having had to leave just as you’d been about to flip the sign to closed (‘Jimin says Tannie peed in his shoes again! I have to go clean it up! I’m so sorry, I swear I’ll cover a close for each of you next time!’), so it’s just you, and Jungkook, and the slip of paper on the counter between you. You’ve worked with Taehyung long enough to trust his judgement and his decisions, as inexplicable as they might seem sometimes, but you do think it’s weird that he’s taken this delivery on board.

“It’s not too far from here,” Jungkook adds, peering at the address on the paper. “It won’t take long.”

“We have to finish closing, Jungkook,” you say. 

He shrugs casually, carelessly. “I’ll do it, I don’t mind. You can just do the delivery and then go home straight after, it’s whatever.”

“It’s not whatever,” you mumble. “Why can’t you deliver it?”

“You’re the senior barista, you’re a better representative of the brand,” he says, and you have no idea where he pulled that from. (You blame Jimin. You know they’ve had shifts together, and Jimin is too smooth-talking for his own good.)

As much as you want to argue, you can’t help but cave, because the prospect of getting home early is one that you’re not about to sniff at. (You’d worry that Jungkook would get home late, what with the amount of prep he still needs to do for tomorrow, but you half suspect that Taehyung will reappear at some point, anyway.) You’re too tired to want to argue. “I just want to say this is a one off, and normally we cater for events, we’re not really a delivery service, okay?”

“Duly noted.”

It’s a simple enough order, anyway—it’s just two drinks. The first is a large quad shot latte with caramel and toffee syrup, extra whipped cream and cinnamon on top (something you’d definitely order, you think, indulgent and milky and with enough caffeine to kick you up the ass). Jungkook dutifully cleans as you start the second drink. The special this week is far, far less sweet than normal; a Rudolph the Red-eyed Reindeer: a simple red eye with a pinch of holiday spice, coffee with an extra espresso shot and topped with cinnamon and nutmeg. You take in a deep breath, swallowing down the warm smell and letting it flow through you before you double check the details on the note.

It takes you a second as you squint at the address, wondering why it looks familiar—and then you pause. This is Yoongi’s office, you think to yourself, and it feels a little like there’s an apricot pit sitting heavy in your stomach, heavy and hard. Paradise had catered a breakfast for them last week, and it hadn’t been on your shift and so you hadn’t gone, but—you’d heard enough about it from Jimin, the type who gets to know everyone and everything the second he walks in the door. You’d heard about the team that Yoongi manages, found out that Yoongi works in music, in artist and repertoire, and when you’d had the chance to Google exactly what that meant, you’d been bowled over. He has such a complex, high skilled job, and here you are, struggling to get a job with your degree, hence the barista thing. (Thanks, economy.)

You hastily shuffle past the address, trying to ward off your sudden sense of inadequacy, focusing on the name instead. What sort of name is Suga? you think to yourself, and then shrug. Probably one of the workers had enjoyed the breakfast the other week and was still hanging around before going on holiday for Christmas, or something.

“Alright, I’m off.” You’re ready to advance into the cold outside: coat on, scarf looped around your neck and hat secure on your head, cardboard tray of drinks clutched in your hands. “If you need help closing, just call me and I’ll come back, okay?”

“I won’t, but, thanks,” Jungkook says, equal parts self-assured and reassuring. “Don’t fall on your ass!”

It is icy outside, the entire world a winter wonderland, beautiful but cold and daylight long gone; snow drifts slowly from the sky above, dusting your shoulders and the top of your hat, flakes caught so softly by the weave of your clothes. It’s the kind of day that’s perfect spent indoors, curled up with the people you love, warmed through and through—and here you are, picking your way across the pavement slush to deliver a coffee to someone. (You’re not even getting paid for this.)

At least it’s not too far, really, just a few blocks away. The building is small, which is a plus, because it means you won’t have multitudes of rooms and offices to trawl past to get to your destination. The receptionist is more than helpful, too, when you say that you have a delivery for Suga; she gives you exactly directions and then she smiles at you, pleasant and pretty and lovely, and that gremlin that’s still clinging desperately onto your feelings for Yoongi whispers: what if this is Yoongi’s girlfriend? She’s beautiful.

Shut up, you think, before smiling back and thanking her, and heading on your way.

This close to Christmas you’d think that the building would be almost empty, but you’d be wrong. It’s not a buzzing hive of activity but there are still people walking around, speaking behind closed doors or laughing through open ones, decorations and tinsel hanging from the ceiling. Up ahead you see a someone come out of a room, shutting the door behind them before they walk in your direction. It’s a man who looks like he’s just stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine and as you pass in the corridor he pauses, raising his eyebrows at you. Not suspicious, just surprised.

“Uh, I have a coffee for Suga,” you say without prompting, as if he was about to accuse you of some sort of nefarious scheme and your coffee delivery is the only thing saving you from that.

“Oh,” mister-model-handsome says, suddenly smiling widely, like this is all perfectly normal and not weird at all. He’s got some of the poutiest lips you’ve ever seen. “You’re nearly there, he’s just down the corridor and on the right. Have fun!”

“Uh, you too?” you reply. (Is he Yoongi’s boyfriend? He’s tall and broad shouldered and incredibly attractive, with the type of smile that makes people’s hearts race, and Yoongi definitely deserves someone like that.)

Your destination seems to be the office the (probably) model just came out of. You look around the corridor, which seems to be deserted now, the hubbub of people elsewhere in the building. You knock quietly, not wanting to disturb the hush that’s filled the air around you.

A beat. Then: “Come in,” someone says, voice muffled through the door.

It swings open easily at your touch. You stand on the threshold, mouth open around the announcement of your delivery when the words die on your lips.

Yoongi’s there, sitting behind a desk and his head bowed as he scribbles something in a notebook. He doesn’t look up. “Shut the door,” he says. Dumbstruck, you do just that, and it’s not until the door’s quietly clicked shut that he starts to raise his head. “Hyung, I already said that I don’t need to eat—”

And then he spots you standing there.

He stops mid-sentence, mouth open, eyes widening. He looks as shocked as you feel, utterly taken aback and agog, and even now you can’t help but notice how good he looks. He’s in a black button up, sleeves rolled to the elbow and top button undone, revealing the pale skin of his collarbones. It’s another juxtaposition, the Yoongi that you’re familiar with (an aura of effortless authority and attractiveness) in a place you don’t know at all, completely professional, his desk neat and the entire space put together. There’s a tastefully decorated tree in the corner but it doesn’t throw off the balance of the room at all. 

“Uh.” You cough lightly. “I have… a delivery… for Suga?”

Yoongi stares at you.

“Is this… not the right room? I can go,” you mumble, gesturing over your shoulder with a thumb.

This seems to snap Yoongi out of whatever thoughts he was having as he shakes his head. “No, this is… Suga’s office,” he says. “I just didn’t order any coffee.”

You open your mouth. Shut your mouth. You don’t have an Americano on the tray, but he’d probably like the red eye, coffee with extra coffee, no sugar or cream. Just a little pinch of spice. 

“Maybe it was a surprise, or something? Couples get each other gifts all the time.”

Yoongi’s lips quirk up. “I’m not really the type that gets surprised with gifts.”

Something about this strikes a discordant note in you. He’s always delivering gifts of coffee—he deserves those expressions of love returned to him. You can’t help but say as such.

“You’re always giving gifts, though,” you say. “Those weekly specials. I wouldn’t be surprised if your other half is returning the favour.”

Blink, blink. He looks perplexed. “I don’t have an other half?”

Your mouth opens again. “Uh,” you say eloquently. “What?”

“I… don’t have an other half? I’m… single?”

“You’re…” Your face scrunches up, wrinkled in confusion. What? He’s… what? “But you always buy two drinks?”

Silence. Then: “I… the Americano is for me,” he says. “I usually just pour the special away. I only started ordering them because you got so excited talking about them and making them. I never planned on drinking them.”

Your mouth falls open, soft around a quiet breath, a soft oh. “You—wait. You ordered them because I got excited about them?”

Yoongi’s eyes are so dark, so gentle; melted chocolate, warm. “You started to talk to me more, after the first time I did,” he says, and you know you had. Because you thought it was safer to talk to him, though you were secure in the knowledge he wasn’t single—but he is single. “So I kept doing it, because I wanted to talk more to you. I thought you knew? And that’s why you started having real conversations with me.”

You’re frozen in place, eyes as big as dinner plates. Min Yoongi, your futile crush, who looks as sharp as a knife but is as sweet as spun candyfloss, has been coming back week after week—for you. He’s not in a relationship, and he’s been flirting with you.

Or at least he thought he had been. You, however, hadn’t even realised.

“I was going to ask you on a date after Christmas,” he continues, calm and steady, as if your brain isn’t melting. He’s still sitting behind his desk, and there’s something about his tousled hair and bared lower arms—watch on one wrist and a few bracelets on the other—that has your heart pounding, that casual air somehow not at odds at the weight of the surroundings. Because the world is a backdrop to Yoongi, and he makes it work.

“What the fuck,” you say. You realise you’ve never sworn in front of him when something flickers in his eyes; not a bad flicker, no. Definitely not. “I thought you were taken.”

“I’m very single,” he says lightly, belying the weight behind the words. And then his eyes drop to your hands. “You said you have a coffee for me?”

Which leads to this: Yoongi, in his chair, you, leaning against his desk. He’s taken the red eye (of course) while you sip at the latte, relishing the punch of espresso, the flavour of the syrups.

You’re both staring at each other as you drink, air in the room growing thicker by the moment, when Yoongi breaks the silence. “This is probably the only weekly special I’d actually want to drink.”

You can’t help but laugh. “Black coffee with more espresso? That’s you all over,” you say. “The other specials aren’t so bad, though. I think you just need to give sweet drinks a chance.”

You’re speaking without thinking, but the second those words leave your mouth, the air turns electric. Yoongi’s still staring at you, unwavering and intent, and everything inside you is melting, leaving you flushed and hot. The smile hasn’t left his face, which had been warm but it’s changed, evolved, edged with something sharper.

“If you say so,” he says. His eyes are on your lips. “Let me try?”

His fingers are so gentle on your face, hands cupping your jaw as he tilts your head down. All your thoughts leave you. There’s nothing in your mind but Yoongi, his warm hands and dark eyes, the heat of his body so close to yours, his mouth; you can’t help but look down, tracing the shape of his lips with your gaze, a small soft pout that’s so at odds with the weight of his intensity. 

When he kisses you, it’s featherlight. Barely the softest of pressures, the potential of something more—and then he pulls you in deeper, and there it is, that heat flickering in your stomach jumping into a full fire. The kiss turns hot and wet as he licks the flavour of caramel and toffee syrup out of your mouth, and he tastes like coffee, dark and bitter; you make a noise against his lips and he swallows it down, pulls you closer.

You’re straddling his knees, a little awkward and cramped in his office chair, but you don’t care. You’ve been wanting to kiss Yoongi for so long, even when you felt like you shouldn’t, thought about his dark eyes and pink mouth, the curve of his lips, the paleness of his hands; a steadying presence around your waist, holding you in place.

When you pull apart, Yoongi’s lips are flushed, kiss swollen. It looks good on him. Really good on him.

“I’ve thought about that more than I’d like to admit,” he says, and you can’t help but feel warmed by it, the realisation that you’ve wanted to kiss him but he’s wanted to kiss you, too.

“This really isn’t comfortable,” you say, wriggling a little—your ass is starting to go numb, sat on Yoongi’s knees—and Yoongi sucks in a quick breath at the way you’re all but squirming in his lap, even if he doesn’t say anything.

Oh, you think. 

When you move away, he lets you go without protest, hands sliding off your waist. It’s not until you fall to your knees that Yoongi realises what you’re doing, his eyes widening.

“Y/n,” he breathes. “You don’t have to—”

“Please, Yoongi, I’ve wanted to do this for months,” you say. Maybe it was a little crass to start with, wanting to get on your knees for a man you barely knew just because he was hot and polite to you, but now you know he wants you back. You’re not about to let this opportunity pass you by, staring up at him between his knees, hands braced on his thighs. “But if you want me to stop, I’ll stop.”

He looks torn, just for a second, eyes darting away from your face and to the door. It’s shut, but it’s not locked, and though the building is quiet there’s nothing to say that someone couldn’t walk in at any second.

Without thinking, you lick your lips. Yoongi’s eyes flicker back at the motion, watching how your tongue moves, and you can see how he crumbles.

“I don’t want you to stop,” he says, and you dig your nails into his trousers, electricity shooting through you.

“You’ll have to keep your voice down,” you warn, and reach for his zipper.

It’s a struggle for him, you can tell. He’s already biting his lip by the time you’ve tugged his trousers and boxers down, hardening under your grasp, and you knew his dick would be as pretty as the rest of him. You don’t have the luxury of worshipping him the way you want to, acutely aware of the fact you’re in his office, but it doesn’t mean you’re not going to make Yoongi feel good. It’s dirty and messy, the way you suck his cock into your mouth lewd and wet, lavishing attention on the most sensitive parts; his hips jump as you circle the head with your tongue and jerk the rest of his length with a hand. 

Everything’s sloppy with spit and precum and Yoongi’s biting off curses, hand tightening in your hair as you take in as much of him as you can, relaxing your throat and swallowing him down, down, down. When you look up at him through your lashes he looks wrecked, the paleness of his skin flushed pink, and you can’t wait to see that all over. Can’t wait to see Yoongi entirely bare in front of you, when you have the luxury of time and pleasure.

But there’s something about this, too, that has your heart racing, cunt throbbing. You’re running your spit slick lips down the side of his shaft, tonguing the throb of the vein there, when you hear footsteps nearby, muffled through the door. It doesn’t sound like they’re coming in this direction and Yoongi seems almost entirely lost to the feeling of your mouth on him, but you flick your tongue across the spot where the head of his cock meets the shaft and he bows forward, swallowing down the noise that threatened to spill from his lips. He’s so fucking hot like this, falling apart under your hands and mouth, and you know he’ll give as good as he gets.

“Gonna cum,” he rasps. You smile up at him before taking his cock back into your mouth, jerking him off hard and fast as you lick and suck—and when he cums it’s with a noisy exhale of breath, a muffled groan, and even as you’re swallowing down his cum and mouthing at him until he winces with oversensitivity, you’re imagining what he sounds like when he doesn’t have to be quiet.

He’s not shy, either. You’ve barely tucked him back in when he’s reaching for you, kissing you. There’s no taste of coffee any more and you shiver, molten and boneless at the way his tongue presses into your mouth.

“Still want to take me on a date?” 

You’re being cheeky, voice light as you joke, but Yoongi’s responding look is equal parts serious and affectionate. He sweeps a thumb over your cheekbone and you relax into his hands, feeling like a cat that got the cream. Here you are, on your knees in his office, the glittering lights of his Christmas tree thrown across your hair and skin, warmed by the touch of a man you’ve wanted for months but never thought you would get.

“Of course,” he murmurs, gentle-gentle-gentle, as if you hadn’t just sucked his soul through his dick—and you love that about him, love his inherent soft core, his big heart. You might not know him as well as you’d like—not yet—but you already know that much about him. “I owe you a present, too.”

Your face scrunches. “What, because I gave you a blowjob?”

At this he laughs, mouth split wide and gums on show as his whole body shakes with the intensity of it. “No, because you brought me a coffee,” he says. He still has your cheek cupped in his hand, palm warm against your skin. “But if you want to say it’s because of the blowjob as well, then sure.”

“There’s plenty more where that came from.” You smile at him, gentle expression at odds with the meaning behind the words and your position—still on your knees.

You don’t know if they ache when you stand, because Yoongi is kissing you again, distracting you. And it’s easy, this back and forth you have, comfortable as you finish the (now lukewarm) coffees and get ready to go, because Yoongi insists on walking you home. Because he’s a gentleman, your gentleman, and he even holds the door open for you.

You’re not sure if you can reach for his hand, if that would be too forward in his place of work, if he doesn’t want to when this thing between you is so tentative and new. But you’re barely halfway down the corridor when he stops you with a gentle hand on your arm; when you look over, he’s smiling at you, and then tilts his chin up.

“Oh!” You stare at the huge bundle of mistletoe above you, tied with red ribbon and messily taped to the ceiling. It brings a smile to your face. “Oh, how cute.”

The hand on your arm shifts down. Yoongi weaves his fingers with yours.

“You know about the tradition, right?” There’s a twinkle in his eyes, and it’s not just from the lights from the ceiling above, turning his dark eyes into warm chocolate, deep brown. “Kissing under the mistletoe?”

You can’t help but blink, surprised at his sweetness, his forwardness. There’s nothing to say that someone couldn’t walk by right now, to see the two of you hand in hand under the mistletoe, but Yoongi doesn’t care at all. He’s staring at you like you’re the only other person in the world, and you feel like a fountain of champagne is bubbling inside you, heady and sparkling and light.

“I think I’ve heard of it,” you say, and he’s still smiling, a small thing, just for you. “Do you think you can show me?”

And he does, with his hand in yours, your lips against his, and up above, the mistletoe sparkles.

(Your phone rings. Caller ID says it’s Taehyung, but when you pick up, he’s not the one who speaks.

“So.” Jungkook sounds knowing, his voice bordering on smug. “How did the delivery go?”

In the background you can hear someone crowding close, put it on speaker, Kookie, I want to hear too, and you can’t help but smile at Taehyung’s eagerness.

“Good,” you say. Yoongi’s palm is warm against yours and you swing your joint hands together, looking at him, entranced by the way the snowflakes dust his eyelashes. The sky above is dark and the wind around you is cold, but the man beside is so bright and warm. You feel wrapped up in it. “Yoongi says he’s going to kill you, by the way.”

“He won’t,” Jungkook says cheerfully, loud enough that Yoongi can hear. He looks fond.

“Well, tell Taehyung I’m going to kick his ass for lying about Tannie peeing on Jimin’s shoes,” you say.

“You won’t,” Taehyung says, equally as cheerful, and you can’t help but smile.

“No, I won’t,” you say. 

You think about the seasons. You think about the man walking beside you; the man who says he hates cold weather, but has kept his gloves off so he can feel your hand against his. The man who came out in the snow to order a drink, just to make you smile. The man who looks like winter but feels like spring, something cold bursting into potential, new life.

In the depth of winter, under the snow and twinkling Christmas lights above, Yoongi squeezes your hand.)

taglist: @beyoncesdragon​ @vensulove

[queercapwriting]

I haven't seen a good Fitzskimmons in a while, so if we could get something with them Cap that'd be great. Maybe juggling the holiday traditions Fitz and Simmons are used to with the desire to create new ones for Skye/Daisy whose upbringing didn't really lend itself to great holiday memories?

It was her first Christmas season with the team, and she felt more out of place than usual.

“Why is Fitz...” Skye tilted her head, unsure how to finish her question. Apparently, Simmons didn’t find that unusual. Of course she didn’t - completing someone else’s sentences was completely normal for her. And there she went.

“Locked in his bunk with a great big Do Not Enter sign on it, blasting heavy metal Christmas music?” Simmons supplied. 

Skye squinted and bit her bottom lip. “Yes?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about him. It’s just something he does every holiday season. He used to transform his room in the Academy into a little Santa’s workshop. The things he invents during the holiday season... One year, he made me a self-sustaining...”

Skye lost track of Simmons’ excited stream of words and stories and memories.

She didn’t have anything like that. And Fitz-Simmons already had their own holiday traditions, it seemed.

May and Coulson probably did, too.

Best if she just left well enough alone.

So she smiled and nodded and acted suitably impressed when it seemed appropriate.

Skye didn’t realize that Simmons noticed. No one ever had before, so why should anybody now?

Skye didn’t realize that Simmons cracked the holiday lock on Fitz’s door (she might be biochem, not engineering, but she knew how to apply Skye’s algorithms when she needed to) and sat on his bed, patiently ignoring his red face and stammering so she could explain that they needed to make extra sure that Skye feels welcome during her first Christmas on the bus.

And Skye had no way of knowing that Fitz’s eyes had lit up, because he was already on it.

She had fully prepared herself to wake up on Christmas morning in a certified mood. Fully prepared herself to put on a fake smile as she watched everyone else do their thing, then throw herself headlong into some assignment that could definitely wait, but that she’d treat like it was the most urgent thing on the planet.

She had not, in any way, prepared herself for Fitz-Simmons to wake her up by pounding on her door, shouting about Christmas and Santa Claus before rapidly descending into a loud discussion of the physics of reindeer-led sleighs and faster than light travel.

She yanked her door open, not caring that her hair was a mess, not caring that her t-shirt was rumpled from sleep, not remembering that she had only boy shorts, and no pants.

“The one day off we’ve had in centuries, and you’re waking me up because - “

“Because we have all these presents for you, Skye!” Fitz said, Santa hat yanked down over his ears, remote controls in his hands, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Jemma tugged her into a tight, full-bodied hug that made Skye gulp and - she couldn’t help it - rest her cheek on Jemma’s shoulder, just for a second, just for a moment.

She didn’t know what to say as Jemma took her hand - she gulped again - and dragged her through the bus to where Fitz had set up a massive tree overnight, stacked high with gifts, a full quarter of them for Skye.

A fully functional, impeccably accurate model of her van. (From Fitz, with proud support and car nerdery assistance from Coulson.)

The most souped-up laptop she could ever imagine (and she imagined a lot), completely customized to her, down to her preferred typing patterns and with a keypad molded to her own hands. (From Fitz, with enthusiastic input from Simmons.)

A perfectly rendered painting of what the night sky(e) would look like from LA, without all the light pollution. (No one took credit for this one, but May actually smiled, like fully smiled, when Skye looked at her with tears in her eyes).

“You’re part of the family now, Skye,” Fitz told her when he tugged his own Santa hat off her head and placed it on hers.

“No escaping it now,” Simmons added.

She spent a good part of that morning crying alone in her bunk. From happiness, for once.

+++

It was another few years before they were all able to celebrate Christmas together again. 

When Jemma first came home from Maveth, she’d hardly been up for a romantic dinner alone with Fitz, let alone a whole Christmas celebration with the family.

On Christmas Eve, Simmons shared a quiet glass of wine with Daisy, and whatever else she and Fitz did to commemorate the evening, Daisy had no clue.

She had fun with Hunter and Bobbi and Mack - it was warm and it was sweet and it was family - but she missed Simmons. She missed Fitz.

She wondered, though she tried not to, if their first Christmas together had also been their last.

If the universe had been so cold to Fitz-Simmons that they’d only ever be each other’s warmth. If Daisy had no other part in it.

But then the next morning came. Christmas morning.

The knock on her door was soft and tentative.

Jemma.

Daisy almost tripped over her blankets to answer quickly. She could never get to Jemma quickly enough.

“Daisy,” Jemma said, the name still feeling new on her lips. But Daisy had meant what she’d said - Jemma really could call her whatever she wanted. “Merry Christmas.”

She held out a mug of cocoa, topped with so much whipped cream that Daisy couldn’t help but smile. Even with everything that had been going on, Jemma must have noticed how much more into sugar Daisy had found herself, after everything with her parents.

“Merry Christmas.”

Daisy thought that maybe their eyes lingered together for a moment longer than they normally would, a moment longer than someone else might consider appropriate.

“I made Christmas pancakes. For you, and for Fitz. Do you want to come back to our room? Share them with us, before Fitz eats them all?”

For you, and for Fitz. Our room. With us. Daisy’s head spun.

She cleared her throat. “What are Christmas pancakes?”

“The greatest pancakes ever to exist, Daisy!” Fitz called from down the hall.

Jemma giggled softly. Once again, she held out her hand for Daisy. Once again, Daisy took it.

Once again, Christmas felt like it could be... home.

+++

“My father didn’t believe in holidays, not really,” Fitz told Jemma and Daisy. After the Framework. After all the torture and all the death and all the... all of it. “Celebrating was a womanly activity,” he said. His eyes were far away.

Daisy met Jemma’s eyes. Tears were burning there - Fitz was learning to talk about his father, but slowly. Slowly. Jemma’s hand absently traced the spot on her leg where Leopold - where Fitz - had shot her.

Fitz noticed. He knelt, immediately, and replaced Jemma’s fingers with his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. Daisy had lost track of the number of times he’d apologized. 

“I was only in there for a day, and I did terrible things too, Fitz,” she reminded him.

She brought her fingers to his chin, tilted his head up so he would look at her. She glanced at Jemma - she was still new at this. At all of this. At figuring out where she fit in their relationship, in their love. She’d been especially nervous about it, around the holidays. Figuring out where she fit, how she fit.

Was Jemma the only one allowed to comfort Fitz, like this? But Jemma smiled and took Daisy’s free hand.

Fitz looked up at her like his life hung on her next words.

And maybe they did.

But he didn’t let her speak them. He’d told her and Jemma, so many times, that comforting him wasn’t their job. Not about this. 

They tried, anyway, and they did, anyway.

But he tried, too.

So he tilted his head so his lips kissed her palm.

“It’s Christmas, Daisy,” he smiled, with his eyes more than his lips. He kissed Jemma’s leg once more before he stood, and offered them both his hands. “My point about my father wasn’t to get lost in the past. It was to a build a future. Our future. He didn’t believe in holidays, but I do. Because you deserve them, Daisy. For yourself. And with us. So...”

He led them both off the Quinjet. He and Jemma had refused to tell Daisy where they were going, or why they were dressed so damn warmly.

Daisy gasped when he opened the bay doors.

He and Jemma had brought her... Christmas.

An immaculate igloo, big enough to fit Daisy’s entire history of crowded rooms with no real connections, complete with a smoking chimney that spoke of a warm fire inside. Two massive evergreen trees on either side of it, all strung with softly glowing white lights. A field of uninterrupted snow, as far as her eyes could see.

She didn’t ask how he’d managed to engineer it all.

She didn’t ask why he’d done this for her. He’d already said - he thought she deserved it.

When Mack emerged from the igloo, mugs of cocoa in his hands and Yo-Yo and Flint trying to get reindeer antlers on his head, May and Coulson next to them, it occurred to Daisy that FitzSimmons - her FitzSimmons - weren’t giving her anything she didn’t already have.

The three of them made a family together long ago. They just wanted to make sure she always knew.

Fitz held her hand while Jemma kissed her lips. Deke whooped from somewhere behind Mack. Flint snapped endless photos mid-laugh, because he’d never gotten over the whole idea of cameras. May tossed a snowball at Coulson, who promptly fell into a heap of fresh snow.

Home. FitzSimmons had brought her home for Christmas. 

And for maybe the first time, she didn’t question it.

[pipsqueakparker]

day 3 - apple picking

hey friends, i’m gonna try my hardest to challenge myself to write a ficlet every day this month, more or less. let’s see how that goes.

i’m going off of this list that @subpar-selkie​ made. 

day one: leaves (AO3) day two: first day of cool weather (AO3)

You can read day three on AO3, or keep reading below: 

BAZ

Simon Snow is laying on the floor of an apple orchard.

This was Bunce’s latest idea to get us all out of the flat. We’ve both been trying to pull Snow out as much as we can. After dropping out of his courses he spent the entire summer on the couch with a hard cider in hand. He’s been so…

Well, it’s not as if I could blame him. His final year at Watford and he lost his mentor, his magic, and his sense of purpose in one fell swoop. He was doing alright for a bit, after. When he was seeing someone; a lovely woman, according to him, that let him talk and talk about everything he’d tried to not think about. She must not have been too lovely, he stopped going to his appointments after a while. He never told me why.

He hardly tells me anything.

We’re still together. He’s not broken up with me, at least, and sometimes he’ll hold my hand when we’re in line at the market. I think he finds a sense of comfort from it, needs something to ground him when we’re around all those people. All those Normals. I don’t know what’s going on in his head, but it can’t be easy to cope with.

I wish he’d tell me something.

Things got worse over the summer. He wasn’t sleeping, or he was always sleeping. He didn’t like to be alone, but he never quite enjoyed us being around. We couldn’t figure out how to help him, and I’m not sure how much he wanted to be helped.

Bunce staged an intervention eventually. She suggested we all go on holiday together, to America of all places. To visit Agatha, and her then-boyfriend Micah. It’s a damn good thing we didn’t. Who knows what hell we would have endured?

She broke things off with Micah a few weeks later, found out he’d been seeing another girl, a Normal girl. A Normal American girl. Good riddance, I told her.

That was when she started trying even harder to get us all out. She put all her spare focus into Snow and how to best help him.

She talked him into seeing his therapist again, somehow. That was probably the most amazing beast I’ve seen her conquer. Snow’s stubbornness.

Apparently he speaks to his therapist about me, which is how he’s ended up talking to me more. Opening up, bit by bit. (Every now and then he’ll still suggest I see her, too.) (Every time I get a little closer to agreeing.)

And Bunce makes plans for us. Snow still hasn’t returned to uni, but this week Bunce and I have a short holiday. We’re both staying here, with him. The weather’s cooling off, the leaves are turning.

And apparently apples are in season. Because today we’re picking them.

I’ve never gone apple picking.

“Neither have I.” Bunce shrugged when I said it. I almost wanted to argue, but Snow perked up as soon as the idea was presented. I can’t argue with that.

So, now he’s laying on the ground in an apple orchard. A pained groan escapes his throat and I’m rushing over to him, my own basket of apples forgotten.

“What happened? Are you alright?” I’m kneeling next to him, checking him over for any obvious injuries. Nothing looks out of place or discolored, nothing is screaming that he needs to go to A&E.

“Wanted that apple.” He lifts one of his arms, pointing at the tree above us. I follow his finger; there’s a plump, shiny green apple tucked up close to some branches. Far out of his reach.

“There are a dozen others right here.” I take his extended hand and use it to help pull him back to his feet. I try not to relish in the lingering touch before he finally snaps his hand away and steps back up to the tree. I roll my eyes for good measure. “What’s wrong with these?”

He shrugs, then reaches for the lowest branch and starts pulling himself up. “This one looks really good.”

“Snow.” Sometimes being with him is like taking care of a toddler. No, I take that back. All toddlers I’ve ever taken care of were far better behaved. Even Mordelia. I grab him by the waist to pull him back from the branch; I can feel his annoyed huff in his belly as I hold him. “You’re not meant to climb the trees.”

“But I want that one.” He leans his head back against my shoulder and I catch his pout from the corner of my eye. I’d probably be annoyed if I wasn’t enjoying the closeness so much. He goes limp in my arms, leaning into me, and I try not to read into it.

For Crowley’s sake, I’m trying not to read into touching my boyfriend.

I let out a long sigh, my breath ruffling a few of his curls.

“Baz.” Simon says quietly, at the same time that I say, “I’ll get that one for you.”

He jerks his head back, looking surprised. His mouth is hanging open just a bit, lips already beginning to chap but still they look so inviting. I let go and step around him, reaching for a branch and lifting myself into the tree. We’re not meant to climb them, that much was made clear.

But I’d stop at nothing to keep Simon Snow happy, even if it’s just the joy of having a particular apple. I pluck it easily and drop back to the ground. Snow’s still looking at me with that stupidly adorable face, a mixture of surprise and confusion.

I hold the apple out to him.

He swats my hand away, grabbing at my shoulders instead and pulling me down to meet his lips. He kisses me softly, one hand cupping the back of my neck and the other curling over my shoulder. Keeping me there, holding me close to him. As if I’d even think of backing away now.

“I love you.” He whispers the words against my lips, eyes still squeezed shut. I’m so close I can feel the nervous puffs of air that follow the confession. They mix with my own, short and rushed and — Fuck, am I panicking? That’s not the proper response. “I — Baz?”

Simon pulls back to look me in the face, brows furrowed with concern. My head is swimming with a mixture of nerves and elation. This moment is all my dreams come true, but I can’t wrap my mind around it actually happening. Around Simon actually loving me. That just sounds preposterous, but..

“Baz.” Simon’s voice cuts through the storm of chaos in my head. He’s telling me to breathe, and counting, and I try to listen and follow his directions. I finally open my eyes and look at him. (When did I close them?) His blue eyes are brighter, hair and skin glowing in the afternoon sun. He’s fucking beautiful, and he just said he loves me.

“Alright?” He asks. The hand he had on my neck is pushing back my hair, caressing my cheek. He’s being so gentle.

I nod.

“I — I’m sorry, if I —” He stops as I shake my head. He’s no reason to be, I don’t want him to apologize for it.

“Caught me off guard.” I admit. My voice is quiet, scratchy. A bit weak. I feel a bit weak, still a little light-headed and floaty. I realize I’m holding onto him, gripping onto his arms like he’s the only thing holding me here.

I think he is.

“I’m so—”

“Say it again.”

He quirks his head and I let out my own annoyed huff.

“I want to do it right, not… not panic. Forget that. Do it over. Say it again.”

Simon chuckles under his breath, then steps in a little closer. Looks at me this time as he says it.

“I love you.”

I smile, take the words in and let them burn themselves to my memory. Make myself believe it’s true, because we’ve been working so hard for this. To have this, to keep this.

“I love you, too.”

[staticscreenwriting]

12 Days of Christmas - [Day 4]

A/N: Day number 4 for the Christmas coundown with @mattysheelies. This one’s almost 6k words. I loved writing this and I hope you like it too. It’s cheesy and cutesy and maybe cliché but it’s Christmas so idgaf. ENJOY ♥

Prompt: Snowed in together.

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x Reader

“I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.”

It happens, every once in a while, that you read a sentence in a book that you’ve read a hundred, maybe a million times before and it suddenly hits you like a punch straight to your gut. Because it’s different now. The book has stayed the same all through the seasons but you realize, you’re a whole new person who’s been through a whole new set of trials and tribulations. And all of a sudden you understand. 

I slump back into the cold, sticky plastic of the bright blue seat and clutch my beat up copy of Catcher in the Rye closer to me. I face the huge windows, looking out into the black of the night and the airplanes, firmly rooted on the ground. There’s a heavy downfall of snow and no sign of it stopping anytime soon. 

Maybe, I realize, this is my reckoning. Isn’t this what I’ve been wishing for ? A white Christmas like the one from the songs and the movies ?

Well merry fucking Christmas, (Y/N).

Every snowflake is a sick reminder of what could have been. Of what isn’t. 

I let my eyes travel around the area. Rows and rows of blue plastic seats. There’s not a lot of people waiting around here. I assume most people have flown home a few days ago to make it in time for Christmas and the few that weren’t smart enough to do that, have resorted to some bar or a restaurant or something. 

In theory, I could do that too. The thing is, spending Christmas eve by myself in an airport restaurant, would just seal the deal for this being the most depressing and downright sad Christmas of my whole life. 

So I stay seated and lose myself in Holden Caulfield's delightful pretentiousness. 

They’re playing Christmas music from a nearby speaker. I wonder if they want to taunt me. Me and everyone else stuck in a fucking snowstorm on Christmas Eve in god damn Indianapolis. They even have a tree set up and where it should make people happy, it only makes me even more sad. I wanna be home with my family, decorating my own tree with all the weird and quirky ornaments we’ve collected over the years. They all come with their own stories and it fills my heart with bittersweet nostalgia.

I’ve never known what being homesick feels like until tonight.

Again my eyes move along the rows of plastic seats. There’s a man in a sharp suit a few rows down. He’s got neatly combed hair and a red tie and shiny shoes and a face that says “ My name is Michael and I don’t allow anyone to call me by a nickname and I have an important job and I drive an expensive car and I probably fuck my secretary. “ 

It’s not a face you particularly want to look at. Except maybe if you’re said secretary. 

A family of 3 sits by the end of the row. They seem — at peace. And for a moment I wish I could be them. I guess it’s different being stuck if you’re stuck with the people you love. 

It makes me bitter to think about it so I avert my eyes and let them travel down the other side of rows. Which turns out to be no better for my mental state because there’s a couple there and they do not seem to care that an airport terminal is not the ideal place for some serious tongue action.

Across from them sits a guy, he’s got a mean mullet. Strands and strands of golden curls. He’s wearing a leather jacket and big black boots and there’s a deep scowl permanently edged onto his face. If he’s aiming for the whole bad boy vibe, he’s really nailing it. 

I can see him shaking his head, as he too notices the couple getting awfully touchy, and I can’t suppress a laugh.

He notices and he looks at me and even across two whole rows of plastic seats I can see just how gorgeously blue his eyes are. 

He doesn’t laugh or smirk or does anything to give me any indication of his feelings. Maybe I’m grateful for it. Maybe I wish he would. It would be quite nice to make a connection with someone right now. Just to make being alone feel a little less lonely.

“ the snow's comin' down

(Christmas) I'm watchin' it fall

(Christmas) lots of people around

(Christmas) baby, please come home”

It’s quite ironic, really,that they would chose this damn song. Of all the Christmas songs in all of the world. 

Mullet boy seems to be a kindred spirit in this regard, I can see him sigh and murmur a “for fucks sake” into to collar of his jacket, as he sinks deeper into the chair.

“They’re singing deck the halls, but it’s not like Christmas at all. “ 

Yeah it really fucking isn’t. 

A smacking of lips catches my attention and I focus back on the couple just to witness the guy’s hand travel straight under the sweater of his girlfriend. It’s a sight I don’t particularly want to see. 

A sight that apparently makes my face screw up in aversion. And as it does, old blue eyes looks back at me and this time, I see a smirk. It vanishes as quickly as it appeared but I know for a fact that it was there. Maybe I don’t have to be all that lonely after all.

I close the bruised and battered orange book that, at this point, is hardly orange anymore, and place it in my backpack. If my life was a John Hughes movie or maybe any other romantic comedy, I’d get off my seat and walk over. There’d be some cheesy some playing in the background, maybe by the Smiths. I would throw him a smile and he’d look at me, an angel’s choir singing wonderous melodies. And tonight would change both our lives forever.

Alas my life is not a movie that Morrissey wrote any songs about. I am a coward and my heart already lies in several little pieces at my feet. So I don’t walk over just like that with no idea what to say, no incentive.

Instead I grab my backpack and walk past him, down a long corridor and end up at a vending machine that sells both, coffee and soup and I secretly pray that they don't come from the same jet. 

The last coffee I had, I think as the warm liquid fills the paper cup, I bought at the little cart by Kelvin’s dorm room. It was a good coffee, had Hazelnut sirup in it. I remember the warmth of it in my hand. I remember the taste on my tongue. I vividly remember the sound of the cup hitting the floor and the stains on my pants and the feeling of my heart as it broke in two.

I don’t want to remember that though, so I will myself to ignore it. To push the thoughts away. I fill the second cup, grab it, put lids on them and then carry them back towards the row of seats.

Mullet boy doesn’t as much as glance at me as I drop down in the seat next to him. Only shows me that he notices me as I hold one of the coffee cups out to him.

“ Sorry it’s not booze. I know that would make looking at these two a little more entertaining. “ 

For a second he just looks at me in confusion, contemplates whether or not to trust me. In the end he takes the drink so I take that for a good sign.

“ Thanks. “ 

His voice is deep and raspy and I really really like the way it sounds. 

“ I wonder if they even realize there’s other people around “ I say, watching the dude’s hand travel down the girls back, as they dreamily blink at each other like the main characters on a romance novel. Maybe those two get the romance and the the Smith song in the background. Maybe I’m just a sad side character in their story.

Mullet boy scoffs, takes a sip of coffee then speaks up. “ Don’t even think they’d notice if we joined in “.

He smirks at that. There’s an absolute underappreciation for people who laugh at their own jokes. I think it’s charming, endearing even. If you can’t laugh at your own joke, how do you expect anyone else to do it.

“ Least they’re not alone on Christmas fucking eve “ 

I don’t know why I say it. I don’t necessarily want to share my sob story. Sometimes my words just move faster than my head does.

“ Christmas is overrated anyway “ blue eyes says and shrugs his shoulders in a way that’s supposed to look casual. Only you can’t say shit like “Christmas is overrated” and be casual about it. There’s always more to a statement like that.

“ You think ? “ 

“ I know. “

“ How come ? “ 

He turns to face me and raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow. It’s like he’s straight from the cover of one of my mom’s romance novels. I think it’s quite unfair that he gets to look like this on a day like today and I — I look just the way I feel. Sad. Exhausted. 

“ It’s none of your business. “ 

“ Oh geez, and here I was thinking we were bonding over our shared distaste for PDA. Guess not. “ 

“ You guessed right. “ 

For a moment, we fall into silence as another song plays over the stereo that has entirely too many obnoxious jingle bells in the backing track. For a moment I feel very lonely again.

It’s then, that the universe seems to have pity on me. It sends me a sign. A gift. A little Christmas miracle if you will.

That comes in the form of the couple getting more touchy, more — obnoxious. So obnoxious that the girl leans back, presumably to lay on the seats, only that’s not what happens. It seems to happen in slow motion when really it’s probably only the blink of an eye. She leans back and back and back and suddenly tumbles off the seats and onto the cold linoleum floor, her mister holding onto her so tightly, he falls right down with her.

My mama always told me not to laugh at other people’s misfortune. But at 18 years of age, I feel it’s time to break some rules my mama set. And this is one of them.

I can’t help it. I laugh. It comes from the deepest corner of my belly and fills my entire being. Then I catch those gorgeous blue eyes looking at my and I notice he’s laughing too. A hearty laugh. I think it’s a good one. No halfway laugh. No bullshitting. It’s a proper laugh and, as we lock eyes, our laughter only seems to increase.

The magic bubble that, until now, has surrounded the couple, seems to have been popped. It’s vanished. For them at least. Because as our laughter rings in unison, a proper harmony of joy, I feel like maybe me and mullet boy have been given a tiny spark of magic ourselves.

“ I’m (Y/N), by the way “ I say, trying to hold in more chuckles.

“ Billy ” 

“ No no, you got it all wrong. His name is Michael and he’s on a business trip that he tells his wife he couldn’t postpone but actually he just wanted to get away from his family for the holidays. “ 

“ Michael ? nah. This dude’s not a Michael. “ 

“ So what’s his name then, Billy ? “ 

He thinks for a moment, face scrunched up in a way that is absolutely adorable. It makes him look way younger than he probably is. Very boy-ish. Very cute.

“ Edward “

“ Edward ? “ 

“ Yes. Look at him, he looks so boring. And can you think of a more boring name than fucking Edward ? “ 

I have to admit, he has a point. So I shrug and nod. “ You have a point. “ 

The little family from earlier, passes us and, as the mom glances towards us, her eye linger on Billy just a moment too long for it to be accidental. And he notices, the cocky bastard. He notices and revels in it, letting the corner of his lips lift up in a teasing smirk.

“ What the fuck was that ? “ I asked, flattened by the sheer audacity for both of them.

“ I got that effect on women of all ages. “ 

“ Wow, your ego is really tiny, huh. “ 

When he looks at me, grin widening and eye filling with mischief, I know I just said the wrong thing. I set myself up with this one, I admit that.

“ That’s the only thing tiny about me. “ 

“ Aaaand that’s my cue to leave. “ I pull myself halfway out of my seat when his arm shoots out and his hand grabs onto mine. The mischief in his eyes in gone, completely replaced by a pure and unfiltered honesty.

“ Stay. Please. “ 

I sink back down and we fall into a silence. He knows that I saw it in his eyes, the fear of being left alone and I know that he knows and so we’re stuck in this weird limbo of whether to ignore it or spill our sorrows to one another. And maybe it’s because today is Christmas and on Christmas you tell the truth, even if it to a stranger at an airport, but he suddenly breaks the silence and starts talking.

“ I don’t wanna be alone. “ 

“ Yeah me neither. “ 

“ I uh — I was supposed to be in California, to visit my mom over Christmas. I haven’t seen her in — in years. This was supposed to be our first Christmas together since I was 8. I called her earlier, from the payphone. I thought she might be devastated. She’s not. I don’t think she cares very much if I’m there or not. I’m still debating whether or not I wanna get on the plane if it ever goes. “ 

“ I came to visit my boyfriend for Christmas. Surprise him, you know. He’s going to college here in Indiana. We’re both from California and we haven’t seen each other since the summer. I thought It was the ultimate proof of my love to him. Well — turns out he’s been fucking his way around campus while I’ve been busy making plans on how to rearrange my life and all my dreams, to come study with him in Indiana after I graduate High School. “

Another silence fills our hearts but this one isn’t thick with anticipation and tension. It’s one that settles deep in our bones as we realize, that sometimes there’s comfort in shared misery. 

“ Merry fucking Christmas to us. “ Billy murmures.

“ Do you wanna go see if we can get a drink at the bar ? “

“ That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a while. “ 

“ I can not believe your fake ID says you’re name’s Ricky Hardman. “ 

“ If you’re mocking me I can just drink this myself, you know. “ 

“ Oh come on. It’s just — that sounds like such a porn name. “ 

“ So what. “ 

I have to snort at his complete lack of self reflection. He knows I’m right but he’s so stubborn. Again I find myself thinking it’s endearing rather than annoying.

To come back to a statement I made earlier, I also think we don’t appreciate the people enough, that make us snort-laugh. Is it a bit embarrassing and cringy? Sure but it’s a laugh either way and I don’t think we should ever take that for granted.

“ Put the cups down so I can spice it up a little bit “ Billy instructs me and I do as he says. This is probably our 4th refill of coffee for the night, my mom would have a go at me for all the caffeine but whatever.

Billy opens the bottle of booze he just purchased at the airport store and pour us both a decent amount into our coffees. Might as well have our own little Christmas celebration if we’re stuck here with nothing else to do.

Cups clutched in our hands we roam around the airport, cheeks warming up from the alcohol. I feel more at peace now and yet my heart is ever as heavy with the longing to be home. 

A sign directs us towards the visitors terrace where families usually gather to watch the planes take off and land. It’s deserted now but that’s not really a surprise. It’s cold, it’s snowing and there’s no flights going anyway. It’s just a dark, snowy night and a lonely runway illuminated by small lights that, if you believe hard enough, almost look like fairy lights in the distance.

“ I know it looks pretty, “ I say as I lean against the banister of the terrace “ but I really don’t find snow all that great.” 

“ I fucking sucks, “ Billy replies. “ It’s cold and wet and turns into gray slosh in the matter of a few minutes. “ 

“ I always dreamed of a white Christmas, now I can’t wait to never see snow again. “ 

“ Me too. I hate it. Snow. Indiana. At least you get to stay in California once you make it there. I have to wait until graduation to finally move back home. “ 

I don’t want to pry, I really don’t but there’s something about him that intrigues me. Everything he says and does in scrowded in some kind of mystery. Some hidden meaning in all of it. 

The way he looks and the way his words hold a certain softness to them, is a whole enigma in itself.

“ You wanna come back to Cali ? “ 

“ Fuck yes. I can’t stay here longer than I need to. I miss the sun and the beach and — my home. “ 

“ Oh god yes, the beach. “ 

“ See, and you wanted to give up on all of that for a guy called Kelvin. “ 

“ I — he’s nice.” 

“ Oh I’m sure he is. And secure and smart. “ 

“ He is. We’ve been together since my sophomore year in Highschool. He was my first — everything. He studies business and is gonna take over his dad’s company one day. “ 

Billy blows a raspberry before turning to me with his perfect eyebrow raised in mockery. 

“ That is so dull. “

“ It’s not “ 

 “ But it is ! Tell me honestly, do you really love this guy or is it just — comfortable. Being with him ? “ 

And once again, something that I’ve considered so many times in my life, suddenly affects me in a completely different way than I am used to. I understand all of a sudden. 

I get it.

“ I mean, maybe you have a point. What makes you the relationship expert though ? “ 

“ Nothing. I’m not saying I am. But I know I never plan on spending my whole life with someone because I am comfortable with them. It’s your goddamn life, you should live it for yourself. “ 

It hits me light a freight train. Straight in the heart. He’s right. Whether I want to admit it or not, Billy is right. I don’t let him know that though, it’s hard enough admitting it to myself. I think he knows anyway, by the way I look at him. By the way he looks at me. 

“ Have you decided whether or not you wanna get on the flight ? “ I ask. It’s still not my place to ask those questions but it feels like something has shifted between us. Like tonight is ours entirely. A night of truths. Of heart opened and unguarded.

“ The alternative is spending Christmas with my dad and his wife and my stepsister. “ 

“ Sounds alright to me. “ 

“ Yeah, only my dad is the biggest asshole on the planet. He’s not a nice guy. His wife is a fucking nutcase, obeying his every will. She has the backbone of a jellyfish. And Max — Max hates me. That one’s my fault though. “ 

I want to hug him. It’s a strong urge that overcomes me. A sudden rush. His words are soft and sad and frustrated and I can see in his eyes just how much this hurts him. And god, it’s Christmas Eve. I just want to make him feel a little less alone.

So I do. I hug him, rest my head on his shoulder and together we look at the snow falling around us, covering the world in a thick white frosty blanket. 

“ I’m sorry about that. Just so you know though, I’m glad we’re stuck here together. “ 

“ Well yeah, I’m hot and fun and I have great hair. “ 

“ Oh there we go again with the ego. “ I laugh. He makes me me laugh. Like genuinely laugh. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this around Kelvin.

“ What’s that book you’ve been reading. “ Billy asks as the laughter settles down again.

“ Catcher in the Rye. It’s one of my favorites. “ 

“ Uh-huh. What’s it about ?” 

“ This boy, Holden. He gets kicked out of prep school and runs of to New York City and yeah it basically chronicles his days in NYC. It’s about loss of innocence and isolation. “ 

“ Sounds absolutely — “ 

“ Wonderful “ 

“ Boring. “ 

Here’s the thing about interests and hobbies. They’re a very personal, very individual experience. They’re yours. And yes, maybe it’s nice to share your passions with another person who feels the same. But let’s be honest: It doesn’t really matter. I am not hurt by Billy’s disinterest. Not even by his mocking scoff. Because it in no way lessens my love for the book. The story it tells and the nostalgia it brings me.

It also doesn’t lessen the affection growing inside me, towards Billy. An affection that both scares and excites me at the same time. By all means, it is delusional to fall for a stranger at an airport, who doesn’t even live in the same state as me. Someone I’ve only spent a few hours with.

Then again, life is never a straight path. I used to think it was but after tonight, maybe I can let myself take some backroads. Take a road less traveled. See where it leads me and if it brings me to a dead end, turn around and try again.

Maybe sometimes it needs a boy with a leather jacket and gorgeous blue eyes, to make you realize that life can be so much more if you just let yourself live it.

“ Okay sure. What are your interests then ? I’m sure there’s something you like doing, something you care about. “ 

“ My car. “ 

“ That’s such a guy answer. “ 

“ Pff, whatever. “ 

“ What else ? “ 

He takes a moment to answer. Contemplates. Mulls his answer over in his head. There’s a vulnerability in his eyes I haven’t seen since he talked about his mom earlier tonight.

“ Music. “ 

“ Music ?” 

“ I really care about music. Not — not playing it but just music in itself. You can’t tell anyone this, okay ? It’s a bit ridiculous and It’s not really realistic, but I would love to work at a record label. Or maybe have my own music venue. To help discover bands and find new, awesome music. Whenever I’m sad or angry or frustrated, or even happy, there’s a specific songs for any emotion, any situation. I want everyone to be able to have that in their life. “ 

There’s something undeniably sexy about someone being passionate about something. He only just started but I could honestly listen to Billy talk about music for hours and hours and hours.

“ So who’s your favorite band then ? “ 

“ I’ll sound pretentious as fuck but my favorites are probably some local bands from my hometown in California. “ 

“ Maybe when you’re back home after graduation, you can take me to a gig. Show me some of those bands. “

My heart beats faster as I realize this is the first time either of us has mentioned there being a future. More than just one magical night at the airport. 

It slipped out but I’m glad it did. The idea of more nights together, more time spent listening to him talk about his music. Experiencing that music with him. It doesn’t scare me. In fact, it excites me so much.

“ Yeah. Sounds like a plan. “ 

“ A good plan. “

“ A great plan. “ 

I don’t know if he notices that I notice, but his hand drops to the small of my back, so gently it’s but a whisper of a touch. It warms me up more than our boozy coffee ever managed to.

Airports have a weird energy. A specific mood that transcends through every corner in every room. It’s loaded with the arrival of change. It might be good and exciting or it might be sad. But something is about to change and you can feel it sizzling in the air.

As I stand next to Billy in the softly falling snow, I know that the girl that arrived at the airport earlier today, heartbroken and without purpose, is not the same girl that’s gonna get on that flight home. Something has changed. I think I like this new girl better.

“ They’re singing deck the halls … “ 

“ Oh Jesus, what is it with this fucking song ? “ 

“ What, you don’t like it ? “ 

“ Do you ? “ 

“ Totally “ 

I don’t know what hits me. Maybe it’s the fact that the future is so awfully unknown. I don’t know if after tonight I will ever see Billy again. Or maybe because it’s Christmas. 

Or maybe because I’m a little drunk and half in love.

But I start to dance and sing along. With the snow falling down on me. Snowflakes dropping onto my hair and melting, leaving it wet and streaky. But it doesn’t matter right then. All that matter is the music and the night and him and I.

“ Come dance with me. “ 

“ I don’t dance. “ 

“ It’s Christmas Eve, Billy. It’s my Christmas wish. Come on. There’s no one around. “ 

Here’s some piece of advice from me to you: If you’ve never had a guy in a leather jacket and biker boots twirl you around while the snow is falling and Christmas songs play over the stereo, then you’re missing out.

Billy’s hand is warm, his smile is gentle. It’s all so vastly different from the way I felt when touching Kelvin. Everything that comes with Billy is an enigma, a surprise. Nothing is certain and yet I am sure that I’ve never felt more alive than I do right now.

The last chord of the song echoes through the night as Billy pulls me close to him, I can see his breath in the cold, accumulating in little clouds. I can feel his skin in mine. 

“ You’re gonna get on that flight, Billy Hargrove. “ I say, my voice but a sigh. A whisper

“ I’m gonna get on the flight. I’m gonna graduate and then come back to California. Permanently this time. I’ll find you and take you to all the underground clubs and show you all my favorite bands. And I’ll even listen to you talk about your books. “ 

“ Even if you think they’re boring. “ 

“ Uh-huh. “ 

“ Hey Billy. “ 

“ Hmm ? “

“ I think I wanna write a book. I think that’s what I want to do with my life. “ 

He’s so close now, our noses touching, our breaths touching, our lips touching. Warm and soft and gentle.

“ Write about us, so you don’t forget me. “ 

I kiss him then. Or he kisses me. I don’t know for sure but really what does it matter. In the grand scheme of things it’s irrelevant who initiated the kiss. It matters that it happened. And by god I will never be able to forget this kiss or the boy that gave it to me. 

“ Dear passengers, we are delighted to announce that the runway has been cleared. The sky is blue and free of any downfall. Flights will resume shortly. More information about departure times will be available shortly. Feel free to turn to our staff for guidance or additional information. 

“ Billy. Hey, Billy. “ I say, and shake him awake. He looks so peaceful and boyish while sleeping, it breaks my heart a little to interrupt his sleep. 

“ Hmm.. ? “ 

“ I think our flights are gonna go soon. Snow’s stopped. “ 

“ Oh. “

I don’t have to ask to know what he’s feeling. What he wants to say. “ Oh. this is it for us. “ 

We gather our stuff, stretch our limbs and get off the uncomfortable plastic seats. The board on the wall shows us that our flights go in just two hours. His to San Diego, mine to LA. 

Our time is numbered and we finally have an expiration date. My heart breaks once again though this time I try to hold onto the fact that we both want a future of whatever it is we’re sharing. Even if it’s just a friendship, I want Billy Hargrove in my life.

“ Hey uh — “ Billy speaks up and takes my hand in his “ let’s make a deal. “ 

“ What deal ? “ 

“ To see each other again. Maybe — maybe next Christmas Eve. “ 

“ Where ? “ 

“ I don’t know. Let me — let me come to you. “

“ Santa Monica pier. “ 

“ Okay sure. “ 

“ Cool. “ 

“ Cool. “ 

He kisses me again and this one too, will stay with me forever. In my heart and in my head.

“ Here I’ll give you my phone number. Call me if anything changes. If my dad answers just ignore his stupid comments “ He says, fumbles around in his backpack and come up with a pen and — a cassette tape ?!

“ Something to remember me by “ he points out as he scribbles his number onto the little slip of paper. “ Some of my favorite songs on there. “ 

“ If you give me something, let me give you something too. “ I say and pull out my old worn out copy of Catcher in the Rye, scribble a message on the first page, then hand it to him.

“ There’s a bunch of notes in the margins. I never got to share them with anyone, I’ll gladly share them with you. “ 

Then I kiss him. Again and again and again, until it’s all I can think about and all I can feel.

“ Flight 207 to LAX boarding now. “ 

And that is it for us, at least for now. The magic of last night is broken. It’s Christmas Eve gone, replaced by Christmas day. No snowstorm. No magic. Just the brutal truth that real life awaits.

So we part. With more kisses and a promise.

“ Until next Christmas. “ 

The plane is already high up in the air when Billy Hargrove pulls the book from his pocket. It’s old and worn out and what looks like it used to be orange once upon a time is now a washed out beige.

He opens it up to the first page and can’t suppress a smile. A real one. Not one of those he fakes for his dad and susann. A real smile that reaches his eyes. One he feels in his heart.

“ Meet me at the Merry-Go-Round! “ 

His heart soars as he thinks about next year. A future that suddenly looks much brighter than ever before. 

There’s a lot of notes and scribbles and highlighted sentences. He skims through it until one passage catches his attention.

“ Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do. “ 

And so he thinks back to the overly touchy couple and their magnificent tumble from the plastic seats. And he remembers her laugh and his ringing up in unison.

He understands. That Holden guy has a point. Maybe it’s worth reading the book after all.

A year later.

I’m rushing through the crowd of people, a vibrant clementine sky the backdrop for my misery. God, why can I never be on time.

My heart hammers in my chest. Please don’t leave. Please don’t leave.

His eyes meet mine across the way as he leans against the banister by the Merry-Go-Round and I feel like I am back at the airport. The magic is back.

“ Sorry I am late. I am so so sorry.  “  I say and can’t help myself but pull him into a kiss. One filled with passion and longing and a promise kept.

“ Ah If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late. “ He replies.

“ You read the book. “ 

“ I read the book and all your notes. “ 

“ That’s good, I uh — have something else for you to read. “ 

It’s a bundle of papers, no cover art or fancy pictures on the front page. All it says in big bold letters is “ A white Christmas - a story of girl meets boy. “ I hand it to Billy and he looks at me in confusion.

“What’s that ? “ 

“ That’s the first draft of my book. “ 

“ You wrote it! “ 

“ You believed I could so I did. “ 

“ What’s it about ? “

“ Oh you know, just a girl and a boy and a magical night at the airport. Lots of snow. Lots of kissing. Little bit of magic. “ 

“ Can’t wait to read it. So, you wanna go see a band ? “ 

“ They any good ? “ 

“ Pretty fucking good!” 

Darlene Love’s voice echoes through the stereo and for the first time I have to disagree. This feels like Christmas more than any moment before ever did.

And my baby is finally home.

 Taglist; [I copied this from @mattysheelies​ and just added a few new ones, if you wanna be added or deleted from the taglist please let me know]

@sebastiansloserclub ; @killer-queen-xo ; @william-hargroves ; @billysgodcomplex ; @daisyxbuckley ; @allabouthargrove ; @mcrmarvelloki ; @charmed-asylum ; @1998--js ; @naiomiwinchester​ ; @hargrovesprincess​ ; @mystrangerfics​ ; @teafrompari​ ; @staybruuutal​ ; @colourado​ ; @higher-further-faster-bb​ ; @ayybtch​ ; @carlaangel86​ ; @baebee35​

[dailyaudiobible]

03/08/2021 DAB Transcript

Numbers 10:1-11:23, Mark 14:1-21, Psalms 51:1-19, Proverbs 10:31-32

Today is the 8th day of March welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is great to be here with you today as we do what we do. We gather, come around the Global Campfire, we release, exhale all the cares of this life that we’re draggin’ around, and we just allow God's word to do what God's word does. It washes into our lives and informs us, directs us, guides us, assures us, corrects and comforts us. So, let's dive in. We are reading from the New International Version this week. Numbers chapter 10 verse 1 through 11 verse 23.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the Old Testament, we need just a little bit of a catch-up because we've gone through the book of Leviticus and through this much of the book of Numbers and so we've been focusing on the giving of the law and the customs in the rituals and the holy days, just the entire tapestry of an emerging culture that is being made out of these former slaves. So, that's been tedious, and we've been in it for a little while. So, today it's…it's easy to miss that today we packed up camp and moved out. Like we’ve been camping out at Mount Sinai for a long time, and we moved out. So, let's remember. There was Abraham then there was Isaac, and there was Jacob. Jacob's name was changed to Israel. He had children. They were the children of Israel. They would grow up in each of those names will become a tribe of Israel. We remember one of those sons was named Joseph and he was trafficked into Egypt by his own family. Of course, he became second-in-command eventually and brought 70 of his household including his father from Canaan to Egypt to save their lives from the famine. They stayed in Egypt. Joseph died and they continued to stay in Egypt. In fact, they stayed in Egypt for 400 years. So, the people that are coming out of Egypt, they have never known any kind of identity other than slavery. That's all they really know to be. Even though God has miraculously with a powerful hand demonstrated what He's capable of to protect his people they still grow weary. And it's interesting because God when He frees them from Egypt doesn't take them straight into the promised land by the coastal route. He takes them into the wilderness because their identity has to change from slave to chosen one and they need to receive the law. They need to receive what will govern them as a people to remind them of this identity. This is accomplished now. God has told them to move out and go to the promised land. They have moved out, but we can't hardly get a few miles before the complaining begins. And that's what we read about today, the complaining, and it's so discouraging. I wouldn't presume to speak for God, but it has to be so discouraging for God who has set His people free with an intention to fulfill a promise to listen to what those people are saying. And it has to be so discouraging from Moses. In fact, it was discouraging enough for Moses to say, “this is too big of a burden, I didn't have all these people, they're not my kids. You’re asking me basically to be a father to them and carry them like they were my kids, and I can’t do it.” And the people start complaining, “you remember when we were in Egypt when we were slaves. We got free meat and cucumbers and melons leaks and garlic and onions. Remember that? It was all free. We were just slaves and it was wonderful.” After all that God has gone through, that we’ve borne witness to as we’re reading through these stories, that would be such a slap in the face. That would be so discouraging. And then the mirror comes up out of the Bible and we find we’re not looking into an ancient story anymore. We’re looking into our own eyes. We had been enslaved and we were brought into the wilderness and we hate the wilderness. We ate the wildernesses of our lives. We spend all of our energy trying to escape them. When the…the truth of the matter, at least as borne out in the stories in the Scriptures is that we should embrace the wilderness. It is shaping our identity and teaching us to be utterly dependent upon God, which…which is in itself complete freedom because we are dependent upon God. But we’re seen that God is taking care of his people. It was the wilderness that God chose as the backdrop. And if you think about the wildernesses of your life, you can think of very, very difficult times that you don't ever want to experience again but that is the time when we learn the most, the most deep bed rock things about our existence and who we are. And, so let's begin as we continue to travel with the children of Israel toward the promised land. As we go out further into the wilderness, let's remember the wilderness is not purposeless. This is where we learn the most valuable things in life and the most valuable thing we can learn is our utter dependence upon God. That changes our identity from trying to be a sovereign to trying to fully be a dependent.

Prayer:

Jesus, we invite You into that. In fact, we…we move toward the Psalms because they speak so clearly what our hearts need to cry, “have mercy oh God, according to Your unfailing love, according to Your great compassion blot out my transgressions wash away all my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sins. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Create in me a pure heart oh God and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from Your presence or take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.” This is our cry from the wilderness or from times of great prosperity. Come Holy Spirit and renew us, even as we continue this journey through the…the season of lent, designed to help us focus, focus our dependence upon You and lament the things that we have allowed that would separate us from You. Create in us a clean heart. In Jesus’ name, we ask. Amen.

Song

White as Snow – Jon Foreman

Have mercy on me, oh God According to Your unfailing love According to Your great compassion Blot out my transgressions

Have mercy on me, oh God According to Your unfailing love According to Your great compassion Blot out my transgressions

Would You create in me a clean heart, oh, God? Restore in me the joy of Your salvation Would You create in me a clean heart, oh, God? Restore in me the joy of my salvation

The sacrifices of our God Are a broken and a contrite heart Against You and You alone Have I sinned? The sacrifices of our God Are a broken and a contrite heart Against You and You alone Have I sinned?

Would You create in me a clean heart, oh, God? Restore in me the joy of Your salvation Would You create in me a clean heart, oh, God? Restore in me the joy of my salvation

Wash me white as snow And I will be made whole Wash me white as snow And I will be made whole Wash me white as snow And I will be made whole Wash me white as snow

Would You create in me a clean heart, oh, God? Restore in me the joy of Your salvation Would You create in me a clean heart, oh, God? Restore in me the joy of Your salvation

[ask-joyce-byers]

#40 please!

1962 | 1967

{45 OTP Prompts: “I want a baby.”, and Drabble Prompt List: “I’m pregnant.”}

Christmas, 1962

The everlasting mismanagement of the NYPD meant that half of the deputies promised off on Christmas day had to work after all, and those who had volunteered to walk their beat despite the snowfall and the forfeit comfort and joy got sent home early to spend time with their families. As it was, Jim Hopper received no especial privileges despite his having requested off to spend the day with his wife. You don’t have kids, was the consensus. The deputies with kids got preference to go home and see their progeny, whereas if you had decided not to reproduce or were just otherwise unlucky, you got to work same as any other day. Nevermind the fact that Hutchinson got sent home, and he and his old lady were far beyond the kid-having age. Andrews and Williard too, both of them empty-nesters.

“Damn unfair,” Hopper muttered to himself, stamping through the snow that night, frozen to the bone, icicles having formed in the ends of his hair, stabbing him in the back of the neck and making his eyebrows so he could see them if he looked sharply up. “Diane? I’m home.”

"Merry Christmas, baby,” Diane beamed, a vision in her bright red sweater, blonde hair curled in loose waves, bangs full and just shading her blushing face. The warmth of the apartment’s interior hit him like a heavy quilt, and he let out a long breath, reaching for her and pulling her into a hug against his snowy coat despite her squeal and helpless attempts to swat him away.

“You’ll get me wet! This is cashmere!”

“Cashmere? Really…” He ogled, hands finding her waist, smoothing there as she pecked him on the cheek and twisted away.

“Food first. Then presents, then -”

“Sleep,” Hopper groaned, and Diane pursed her lips.

“If you say so.”

“Unless you had other ideas.” His level of alertness was immediately heightened.

“Food first,” she reiterated, all but dragging him into the kitchen where a modest, but fragrant ham sat, resplendent in its roaster, bordered in seasoned potatoes and bright greens. “And for dessert-” She gestured to the oven and he bent, cracking open the door to reveal a good deal of indistinguishable shadow and the unmistakable scent of apple pie.

“You’re an angel,” Hopper proclaimed, hugging her to him again, and this time she let him as he pressed a resounding kiss to her rosy lips and dragged a freezing hand through her soft hair. “Lemme go get cleaned up.”

“Please,” Diane grinned, and while he rummaged and recuperated, splashed and stomped, she arranged the presents on the small kitchen table, crowned with the bright Christmas tablecloth and overhung with fake evergreen swags. Little things, they weren’t living on big money here, but he was home from overseas, they had their own place, and it was time to start enjoying the little things in life. One present in particular, very light and thin, she placed in the forefront.

Supper enjoyed, one and two word answers to her questions sufficing to explain that the food was too good for conversation, Diane slowly inched the envelope towards him.

“Open this one first.”

“Why don’t you open one of mine? The little square one.” A bracelet, something he’d picked out with help from Mrs. Hutchinson, as he had about as much idea what to get a lady as a grizzly bear knew how to pitch a tent. He was keen to see if he’d hit the mark.

“Open mine first. You’ll like it.”

“Will I?” Tearing into the envelope with impish impetuosity, he pulled out a simple card made of folded stock paper, drawn all over in different colored ink and the curly message OPEN ME. Lifting a brow, Hopper did so and saw, in stark contrast to the elaborate outer portion of the card, the inside was blank save for one, short sentence.

I want a baby.

Blue eyes looked up at Diane, and then back to the card, and then back to Diane, the muscles in his jaw working as he strove to work out an appropriate answer.

Yes. Yes. Right now.

“You want a baby,” was all he managed to echo, voice sounding strange even to his own ears. “You don’t wanna wait another year -”

“Way I see it, we’ve done enough waiting.” Nam. It hadn’t seemed like waiting to him, it had been war, it had been hell, but back home, to Diane it had to have seemed like decades.

“You, ah….” He licked his lips, meeting her gaze at last. “You wanna start workin’ on that now?”

“You don’t want to finish presents first?”

“They get better than this?”

He stood, leaning across the table to capture her lips. The way she slowed into the kiss, her breath catching, fluttering against his skin, his hand going up to cup her cheek, and suddenly the fact that her sweater was cashmere didn’t matter at all, he just wanted it off. On the table, in the floor, anywhere not on her.

A baby. With blue eyes and blonde hair, just like Diane, perfect in every way.

Come September, he was reminding her of that, telling her his dream, their dream as he drove her to the hospital, her breath fast and ragged, forehead beaded with sweat, clenching his hand in a vice-like grip.

“Some Christmas present, huh,” he made the mistake of commenting, turning to her with a forced smile, and she tore her hand away at that.

“Just drive, James.”

James. Ah, he was in trouble, then. She never used his real name unless she was upset at him, or on other very, very special occasions. One like the one that had tears starting to his eyes some hours later as the nurses placed a very small bundle of pink blanket into his arms, tiny breaths shuddering her little body against him, eyes murky and blinking, looking into his own.

“Hey, little one,” he managed, voice hoarse. “Hey, baby girl. What’re you lookin’ at, huh. Big scary man? I’m your dad, little one. Your dad.”

“She’s beautiful, James,” Diane breathed, and reached for him, taking his hand, a faint smile tugging her lips. “Some Christmas present.”

__________________________________

January, 1967

Joyce pressed her eyes shut at the approach of footsteps outside the bathroom and steeled herself for the verbal onslaught. You’re taking fucking forever, what kind of issue do you have, locking yourself in there for hours at a time, hogging the entire goddamn bathroom because god forbid anyone else in this house have to take a piss while you’re in there doing your hair or whatever shit -

“Almost finished,” she called, not waiting this time, hearing his impatient breath on the other side of the door. “You should just go without me.”

“You’re coming with me. I’m meeting a potential agent, and I don’t wanna look like a fool who couldn’t get his wife to go and be social.”

“What kinda agent is this now?” Joyce managed, voice thin, fighting off another wave of nausea and hardly daring to look at the typed report on the counter, courtesy of the doctor’s office in Larrabee. If only there was some simple way of doing the same tests they did there from home, of checking this yourself, then one could avoid the embarrassment, the exertion, the expense…

She’d demanded a copy of the lab report anyway, and irritated, the girl with red nails had typed it up for her and yanked it from the typewriter. It was only because Joyce had proudly gotten an A in biology that she even knew the significance of hGC at all. Why the x-ed out upper-case H irritated her so much before the proper typing of the lab result was something that even good grades could not explain.

“Joyce.” The doorknob rattled and she grit her teeth against the jolt it gave her pulse. She’d locked it; short of forcing the door, he wasn’t coming in, though that had happened before. “Hurry the fuck up. What in the hell is taking -”

“Lonnie, I’m sick. I don’t wanna go.”

“Did you go to the doctor?”

“Yes.”

“What’d they say?”

“That I’m sick.”

More muttered curses. “Of course they did. Tryin’ to get money from you, they’re never gonna turn someone away and say you’re fine now, are they. Use your head, Joyce. You’ve been sick for days, I’m done with your damn excuses.”

“Lonnie.” Joyce steeled herself, eyes pressed shut from her seat on the edge of the tub. “Go to your meeting. I’ll see you later.”

“And leave you to sleep or watch TV while I work to get the pro-ball career that I’ve been after for years? No, you’re comin’. If I have to do this, so do you.” As if she didn’t spend entire weeks working at Melvald’s and coming home to an empty house, cooking actual food every night anyway on the off chance he should come home from whatever dive bar he was in this time, networking and schmoozing, all so he could have the pro-ball career he insisted was still coming to him. As if anyone else paid the bills to this house, as if he’d ever done a single thing for her other than order her around and wear her on his arm like some kind of gaudy watch.

The last jibe had her on her feet, steadying herself and yanking open the door, letting the full effect of her appearance sink in. Dark hair tumbled, face paler than a ghost, she simply stood there and met his eye for a long moment, before thrusting the typed paper towards him. Brow lowering, he grappled it and fumbled it open, peering in the shadow of the corridor before pushing past her into the bathroom to use the light of the high-set window.

“The hell is this?”

“My report from the doctor.”

“Did you get an A,” he jeered, and Joyce didn’t even bother responding, waiting for him to peruse the typed lines and thrust it back at her.  “What’s that supposed to mean anyway. You dying? You have cancer?” Is it gonna be expensive, she could all but hear the unspoken accusation.

“There.” She poked the corrected hGH line, the reading stating simply P. Positive.

“Okay?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Lonnie’s response was immediate, a muttered curse, a long scrutinizing look toward her midsection, and then an accusatory stare at the paper. As if he didn’t trust it.

“And how’s that supposed to prove anything?”

“It’s a hormone,” Joyce explained wearily. “You either have it in your blood or you don’t, and I did.”

“And that means you’re pregnant.”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit, Lonnie, that’s how it works. I’ve been throwing up, feeling awful -”

“This is it, then.” He flung the paper to the bathroom counter. “The gig’s up. How’d this happen?”

She didn’t even bother asking what he meant by the gig being up, he meant, however he decided to express it, that he had to face responsibility now. To at least be present, if not contribute. Somehow she doubted that was gonna happen.

“I figure it happened one of those times you came home drunk,” Joyce drawled and Lonnie fixed her with a warning glare.

“You’re blamin’ this on me?”

“You’re the one running the show when that kind of thing happens, so yeah, I’m blaming it on you.”

The sound of a resounding slap, skin on skin echoed through the hollow of the bathroom, and in the mirror, Joyce saw her own cheek flare red.

“This is your deal,” Lonnie threatened, voice low. “You deal with this, and it better not put you out of a job. That’s all we got until I can land this gig, and this better not derail the whole fucking plan.”

“’S not gonna derail anything,” Joyce mumbled, and her hand, instead of going to her cheek, went to her middle. As if by his blow he’d insulted not her, but one innocent in all of this. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.”

“You better. Lay down, I guess.” The nicety flung over the shoulder was all she got as he made for the front door and grabbed his coat. “I’ll make some kind of excuse for you.”

“Thanks,” Joyce muttered, her voice barely audible as she made her way gingerly to the couch and curled up there.

“And Joyce?” His voice, calling back through the cold air of the open door had her lift her head. “If it’s a boy he’s gonna learn to play ball.”

Then the door slammed, and she was left in quiet. Some say that when you bring a kid into a marriage, it can serve as a saving grace in the eleventh hour, bringing couples back together again. But in that moment Joyce Byers was never more sure – that one day, as soon as she could save up enough money, pay off the house herself and get it transferred to her name – one day,  this was going to be her home, her life. Hers, and the tiny life inside her. And if he didn’t want to play baseball, she wasn’t going to make him play goddamn baseball.

[sieben9]

“hyperion heights” impressions

{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}

::plays “New Season” from Galavant::

…look, I’ve got the thing stuck in my head, and I thought I’d share.

I liked the episode? I think? There’s a lot of set-up and not a whole bunch of plot, but I think I like the things that were set up. And the characters definitely got off to a strong start (with one little problem I’ll get to later), so that’s always a plus for me.

More under the cut.

OK, so the flashback was a good, solid foundation for further conflict. Henry and Cinderella had some solid chemistry, and the twist to her particular version of this tale was one I did not see coming.

murderous Disney princess in a poofy dress on a motorcycle is definitely a Look™

I have to say, getting in a traffic collision with your future partner is... actually very on-brand for every single part of Henry’s family. Glad to see you’re keeping traditions alive, pal. (And yes, that explicitly includes Regina, who found her first girlfriend through breaking and entering.)

And it’s ...let’s say “nice” to see that Lady Tremaine, in whatever universe we see her, still continues to be The Worst. More on that below, but I found it interesting that one mainstay of OUaT seems to be that no, she’s horrible to all her children and not just her stepdaughter. It’s just different kinds of terribleness. I’m also wondering if Cinderella just has the one step-sister in this version (I know for a fact that there are some out there where that’s the case) or if it’s a plot point. And if there really is only one sister, the next question is: where is she? Did something horrible happen? And if so, was it the result of her mother’s terribleness or (part of) the cause? So many questions, so little time~

…can you tell I’m loving this bit? I mean, I hate her guts, but she intrigues me, which is always great. (Me? Latching on to a villain? What a strange thing to happen.)

The closing shot for the flashback plotline is very promising, with Henry deciding that no, home can wait, the strange lady who punched him in the face and almost framed him for murder needs help, first. …you know, I can’t even tell which part of his family he gets it from, because they are all completely bananas.

you grew up great, buddy

Also, just as a closing question: does he have a magic motorcycle? Is that why it doesn’t need fuelling up in however long it’s been since he left Storybrooke? Just asking.

I mentioned my one problem with the modern-day cast at the top, and I’ll just get right into it: my biggest problem at this point is not comparing everyone’s “roles” to the original cast configuration. Like, “Roni” doing Snow’s job (even if her temper is very different from Mary Margaret’s). Henry isn’t Emma, even if he’s the “new guy in town”, and Lucy isn’t Henry, even if she clearly inherited his “little shit” genes. (I love her so much, but how her mother manages her on her own, I will never know. Victoria Belfrey sure as hell isn’t Regina, because Regina would never treat any child of hers this way, thank you very much. In fact, I wonder if she and Cora went to the same school for being a terrible mom together. That’s the level of “I do not like this person” I’m on.

Still, the Hyperion Heights people seem like a good bunch, and I look forward to seeing more of them.

Henry is a lovable fuck-up who thinks he made up the entirety of the show so far and managed to squeeze it all into one book. My guy. I know what the transfer rate from TV to prose is. You could never fit that in one volume.

at least not that one. that’s... what? 600 pages, tops?

And is it just me or did his particular role in the curse take a fucking dark turn? Because it’s bad enough to separate everyone from their loved ones, but giving the guy fake memories of his wife and child burning to death in a house fire? Just… wow. Please let the poor man remember soon because this will be haunting me until then.

Speaking of things that will haunt me…

They didn’t recognise each other and I was not prepared for the complete gut-punch that was. They were sitting there, looking at each other, and they didn’t know. Guh! (And yes, I am 100% convinced that Roni is, in fact, Roni and not Regina, because she might have kept up the pretence for a good enough reason, but she’d never have kept that good a poker face; I also doubt she would have given her son and his not-quite-date strong liquor at before 4pm)

Special mention goes to Henry’s line of “imagine if I were to walk in here and say that I’m your son”, because yeah, imagine you doing that. To anyone. What a crazy thing, right? (

And while I’m on the topic of Roni…

I love her so much. Everything about her. Her attitude, the way she moves, the Looks™ she gives people, her voice… Yeah, I may not be entirely objective on the topic, why do you ask. I am also looking forward immensely to seeing her butt heads with Belfrey. Because of reasons.

this scene is 95% of the reasons

I also wrote in my notes “so the villain this season is gentrification?” and honestly, I don’t think I was that far off. There’s definitely a strong theme of class in this set-up, and I hope the writers carry that through at least a little.

A quick rundown of the other characters, while I’m at it:

I like Jacinda well enough, although her main character trait at the moment seems to be “really, really stressed out”. Which is fair. She’s a single mom with Belfrey as her only family connection. Her scene with Henry in the bar and with Lucy at the well was extremely adorable, though, so I’m optimistic as for future developments. (And Cinderella bought her some goodwill because she was determined and vulnerable and scared and generally amazing in all the right ways. I liked that version of her, and it’s been established that your cursed self hardly puts your best traits on display.) I definitely smiled when she made that wish at the well.

Good on you, not giving up hope. (And I immensely appreciated the way it was set parallel to Henry finally writing that first sentence of his.)

I’m… not 100% sure who her roommate is meant to be, which is going to irk me until I am, but I can live with a little mystery in my life *g*

I have no idea what Weaver’s deal is, but I really hope he isn’t awake this one time around.

please take that man’s head out of the water

Rumple as a police officer is… uh, a special kind of hilarious. A really terrible one, too. And now he’s partnered up with not-Hook, which, to coin a phrase, I’m sure they’ll all laugh themselves sick about some day. I’m interested in seeing what his connection with not-Alice is. Both in the modern-day plot and in the flashbacks, because there’s usually some kind of interplay between the two storylines.

Rogers is… not on screen that much. He seems nice. Which is already a better opinion than I had of uncursed!Hook, and that is a crying shame because they’re all bound to wake up at some point. Still, I’m holding out hope. People have said good things about Hook in this season.

Apart from all that, there’s also an implied mystery in this season that I really like, and it’s “who, exactly, cast the curse?”

I mean, it’s clear that the show is setting up Lady Tremaine as the Big Bad, but 1) I’m not new here, I know how much these writers love their villain fake-outs, and 2) I get the feeling that her whole “magic can be taken away blah blah” speech might be meant to give a hint that it’s not, in fact, her.

god, I hate her so much already; it’s delightful

Which leaves the question of “OK, then who?” and I… have a few thoughts. Which I will keep to myself until at least three episodes in because I doubt that we’ve met all parties involved at this point.

In short: on strength of its characters alone, I am cautiously excited for this new season. Bring it on!

And, because it didn’t fit anywhere else:

The keychain made it through!

[picturetoburnnn]

Seasonal Love | Calum Hood x Reader

Pairing - Calum Hood x reader

Word Count - 2k

Rating - PG

Note - this in no way at all reflects my views of Calum Hood, he is a pure angel and wouldnt do this, it is all purely fictional

He met you in the fall, and loved you in the winter. He strayed from you during spring, and left you under the summer sun.

~~~~

The autumn leaves falling brought you together in the first place. You had been merely sitting on the nearby bench, doing nothing but enjoying the calming quiet that blessed the cool air. His first look at you was from a distance, admiring how at peace you could be at a time such as this, the brisk air blowing red and brown leaves throughout the square. His first thought of you was from a distance, wondering how an angel such as yourself could find reason to grace the earth. The second time he saw you, he was closer. He didn’t dare say anything, not after staring at the ground the whole walk over. He sat carefully on the opposite end of your bench, stealing glances between the pages of a book and sips of coffee. The poor boy nearly lost his mind the first time he heard you speak.

“H-hi there. I’m Calum. Hood. C-Calum Hood.” His stuttering voice brought an amused smile to your face.

“Y/N. I’ve seen you around a couple times, right?” You held your hand out for a shake, and of course he couldn’t help but take a moment to just think about how right your hand fit in his.

The thought that you may have noticed him before made his heart do flips in his chest that any gymnast would’ve been proud of.

“Uhm, y-yeah. I walk around here just about every day.” He didn’t mention how this route was actually far out of his way, how he only came this way to maybe catch sight of you along the way.

A slight blush dusted both of your cheeks, neither knowing quite what to say.

“This… This may be a little forward, but do you wanna maybe hang out sometime? There’s a nice coffee shop a little ways down the road I know, maybe we could meet up and talk?” Calum looked at his hands while he spoke, too embarrassed to look you in the eye.

“That sounds really nice actually. I’d like that.”

The boy’s head popped up instantly, eyes lighting up at your agreement. “Really?”

“Yeah, definitely! Here, let me see your phone.” You stuck your hand out, palm up. He slowly drops his phone in your hand as you dig yours out of your back pocket, handing it over.

You quickly tap your number into his contacts, and he does the same. “So, I’ll see you later?” His voice rises at the end, undeniably hopeful.

“Definitely.”

~~~~

The cold winter brought you two closer, and he still looks at you like you put the stars in the sky. Many nights had been spent at one or the other’s place, curled together on a sofa with blankets up to your neck, watching a movie or the fireplace or the snow outside the window. The company couldn’t be better, and you both felt safe together. Christmas was approaching, and neither of you could wait. You set up the trees in both apartments, so that no matter where you ended up it would at least be festive.

The day finally arrived when you and Calum awoke to the early morning sun reflecting on white blankets.

“Good morning sweetheart,” he smiled sweetly, eyes closed against the sunshine.

You just groaned in response, pulling the blankets up to your face. “Five more minutes.”

He let out a small chuckle. “No baby, c’mon! It’s Christmas!”

You peeked your head out from under the covers, “And what a horrible boyfriend you are for waking me up so early on a holiday.” Before he could say anything, you darted back under the warm comforter.

The laughter resumed outside the cocoon of blankets you were surrounded by. “I apologize, but I think I am a great boyfriend, because I planned out the entire day. So get up so you can have the best Christmas of your life.”

Another groan sounded, but you conceded and unwrapped yourself from the covers. “I don’t know if this’ll be the best Christmas ever. When I was six I got the Lego set I’d been wanting for months - the only way to top that is a pony.”

A short kiss was pressed against your cheek. “You doubt my Christmas abilities.”

You stretched yourself out, splaying your limbs out across the bed. In the process, you may or may not have hit Calum in the face. A short whine alerted you to his indignance. You smirked at him, saying “Get out, I need to get changed.”

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he whined.

“That doesn’t mean you get to see it now!” You hit him with a pillow.

“Fine fine fine fine. I’ll be in the living room.” He kissed your cheek one more time before grabbing one of his shirts from the drawer and exiting the room, gently shutting the door behind him.

True to his word, it was an amazing day, and it definitely beat your Lego set Christmas. Filled with gifts from each other and wrapped in love, there wasn’t much that could possibly make the day better. That evening, you two were curled together on the sofa, his arm wrapped around your waist, your head on his chest.

“I love you, you know.”

You gave a small giggle. “I know. I love you too.”

He played idly with your fingers. “Move in with me.”

You drew your head up just slightly. “You mean it?”

“Of course,” he nodded.

“Okay,” you settled back down to your original position.

“Okay,” he repeated, kissing the back of your hand.

~~~~~

In late April, you knew something was going on. He wouldn’t be home until late, he left to hang out with the boys more and more often. He’d come home at a quarter to two in the morning, smelling like he had gone swimming in a pool of cheap alcohol. He’d climb into bed without saying a word, snoring loudly while you stared at the ceiling.

Tonight you had seen a lipstick stain on the collar of his shirt. And it wasn’t the color you wore.

Tears fell slowly as you faced the truth. He wasn’t yours anymore. He didn’t see you the way he used to.

In the morning, you woke up to another empty and cold bed. He wasn’t here, yet again. Making your way to the living room, you saw him on the couch fiddling on his phone. Not making a sound, you stepped behind him, throwing your arms around his neck. He jumped in surprise, immediately darting to put his phone away.

“Morning, baby,” you smiled into his neck.

“Jesus Y/N, can you not?” He was clearly not amused.

You backed off, standing straight. “Sorry,” you said sheepishly.

“Just leave me be.”

You frowned as he went back to his phone, now angling it away from you. Stepping around the couch, you made your way to stand in front of him.

“Cal, did I do something?”

He looked up at you questioningly. “How do you mean?”

You took a deep breath. “You’ve been blowing me off a lot lately. Not showing up for date night, coming home really late, and hardly touching me anymore? Did I do something to make you mad at me or something? You haven’t kissed me or held me or anything in the past two weeks. We’ve lived together for four months but I hardly see you anymore. What did I do? How can I fix it?”

He looked down, then back up, huffing. “It’s nothing. Just drop it Y/N.”

You scoffed. “Just drop it? Calum, you don’t come home until the early hours in the morning, and when you do you’re drunk off your ass and covered in cheap perfume. Am I just not good anymore?”

“Damn it, Y/N, I said drop it!” The growl in his voice was enough to make you take a step back. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“Then when is a good time to talk about it?” The challenge in your quiet tone was clear.

“How about not now,” he grunted, going back to his phone.

~~~~

It’s mid June and you know it’s ending. His behavior is worse and he hardly ever sees you anymore. You and him had been invited to one of Ashton’s parties, and of course you both went.

Problem was, you want to leave now and you can’t find Calum. It’s midnight, you have work in the morning, and so does Calum. Searching the small crowd, you spot a rather tall blonde face.

“Luke! Have you seen Calum?” Your call caught his attention, and he made his way to you.

“What did you say?” He put his hand to his ear, leaning down to you.

“Have you seen Cal? We gotta go.” He hesitates to answer, and you know something’s up. “What is it, Luke?”

“I saw him, he’s in the kitchen on the counter but he’s…” He trails off, not wanting to complete the thought.

“He’s what, Luke?” You automatically brace yourself for the worst.

“He’s with someone else.”

And just like that, your world comes crashing down. You’ve known he’s cheated, but to do it when you’re in the same building…

Without another word, you push past Luke, ignoring his calls for you to stop. You storm into the kitchen, and almost die where you stand.

Just as Luke said, Calum is sitting on the counter, but there’s a girl who’s not you standing between his legs, kissing him, and he’s kissing her back and all you know is that should be you, that should be you and it’s not you.

Luke comes up behind you. “I’m sorry, Y/N.”

You turn, looking down at the ground. “I’m going home. If he asks, just tell him I was tired.”

Luke nodded sadly. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Why are you sorry? You’re not the one who’s making out with someone else right in front of your girlfriend.” Without another word you sidestep him, walking out the front door.

Sitting in your apartment, all alone, you contemplate your options. You could pretend it never happened, like you’ve been doing for the past three months. You could confront him, too. Yeah, you’ll do that.

Morning comes and you wake up to Calum making his side of the bed.

“I’m surprised you even came home,” you say sourly.

His head snaps up to you. “What did you say?”

You sigh angrily. “Cut the shit. I flat out saw you making out with another girl last night. Right in front of me Calum.” He drops his head, almost embarrassed. “I’m sick of this, Calum Hood. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen evidence of you with someone else, but to do it when I’m in the same fucking house is just showing you don’t even care anymore.”

“Maybe I don’t,” he mutters.

Your breath gets caught in your throat. “Excuse me?”

He looks you dead in the eyes. “Maybe I don’t care anymore. Did you hear it that time? I. Don’t. Love. You. Anymore.”

You will the tears not to fall, not to gather in your eyes. “Is that it then?”

He doesn’t reply, just continues staring at you.

“Get out.”

He doesn’t challenge you as he stands, gathering what small amount of things he has still in the room.

“I would say it’s been a pleasure, but it really hasn’t these last couple months,” he snaps, stepping out of the bedroom.

“Leave,” you growl, following him.

He shrugs, and steps out the front door. “I’ll send one of the boys for the rest of my stuff.”

You all but slam the door in his face. When you’re sure he’s gone, you slide to the floor, pulling your knees close to your chest. The tears you’ve been holding back are finally let loose. It’s not the first time Calum’s made you cry. He may not love you anymore, but you sure as hell still love him. Even after all he’s put you through, you still love him.

Although no one asked for this, I just felt like it heheheh

Taglist (dm me to be added because right now its literally one person)

@cxddlyash

[rosymaplemoth]

An Italian Christmas

There comes a time in everyone’s life where you see a character that was just kind of left high and dry by their creators and you just sort of grab it like “ah, yes, this is my baby now”.

Anyway that’s the only explanation I have for why I’ve written canon x oc Code: Realize fanfic involving Avido fucking Crudele. Also blame @thebluestmage​ because Alice Liddell is our joint custody OC.

Wordcount: 6895 Pairing: Avido Crudele x OC (Alice Liddell) Rating: General Audiences (with a foul mouth) Warnings: Language, mentions of Catholicism and the religious aspects of Christmas, butchered Italian (I tried my best!!). 

Background: Avido escaped jail prior to the Nautilus’ attack and retreated to Italy with a plan to rise back to power, slowly but surely. This takes place at the same time as the Wintertide Miracles fandisk, that is-- the first Christmas after the Nautilus.

----

“Hold on, help me get the popcorn chain around!”

“You already have a chain of cranberries, nuts, peppermints… how many garlands does this tree need?”

“Many more! The best trees are absolutely chock-full of decorations, you know.”

“I was always under the impression that the most dignified trees had little on it but the regal glow of candles.”

I peer at Avido from my side of the tree, and he does the same with a quirked eyebrow.

Saying nothing, we walk around to see exactly what the other had done to their side.

His is almost completely bare! Sure there were the garlands, but those were technically borrowed from my side. All he had put on were gilded candleholders and a few cotton strands meant to be snow.

“Boss, there’s nothing on here…”

I turn to look at Avido, who’s staring at my side of the tree with a curled lip.

“… How tasteless. Tell me, do Great Britain’s trees often look as though a child has crammed an entire market into its branches?”  

I put my hands on my hips. “If it’s a traditional tree, they do!”

We take a few steps back and look at the tree. It’s lopsided. Badly.

“… Tell me, Miss Alice, where did you plan for me to hang your presents?”

I twirl a strand of my hair in my fingers and give him a cute smile. “My, Mr. Avido, whatever are you talking about?”

“In these ‘traditional’ trees you seem to be an expert on, aren’t the presents hung from the branches?” he gives a slow smile. “Don’t tell me you plan on having me hide yours among this wall of tinsel!”

“Oh, you plan on giving me a gift?” I put a hand to my chest, mocking one of his faux-polite bows. “You’re going to spoil your name if you do so many sweet things for me.”

I yelp as he suddenly grabs me by the waist and dips me down low, his lips hovering temptingly close to mine.

“The only thing I plan on spoiling is you, my little mole,” he says. “You fell in love with the cruelty that I’m named for, didn’t you? Wouldn’t it be cruel of me, then, to deny you that pleasure and instead treat you as a princess?”

“Avido…” my voice is caught in my throat, but I barely have time to register how quiet I sound before he kisses me deeply.

He moans as though simply kissing me is bliss, tilting his head and parting his lips to deepen it. I’m surprised to feel my heart pounding in my ears, and my fingers aching to hold him just as tight. Not wanting to give him that much, though, I simply curl my fingers into his lapels and pull him tighter to me.

“Alice...” his lips are still on top of mine, kissing me through his words, muttering devotional phrases in his native tongue.

“Mister...” I run a hand through his slick hair as he begins to kiss down my jawline. “A-Avido, wait, wait!”

I giggle as he kisses my neck, listening to him groan as he wraps both of his arms around me. I squirm to get away, finally laughing: “Is this how you plan on celebrating the Immaculate Conception?!”

I put a finger to his lips as he slowly pulls back, glaring at me over the rim of his monocle.

“I wasn’t aware you observed it,” he says, his voice even. It was like the desperate pleas coming from his throat hadn’t even been uttered.

Oh, I do love teasing him!

“I don’t,” I say with a shrug. “But since I’m new to this place, I wanted to learn as much about this country as I could. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is the start of the holiday season here, right?”

Avido lets go of me and stands up, pausing to straighten himself out and smooth his hair back before walking back to the tree. When he picks up one of the paper ornaments I had made, I glare at him and cross my arms. He just arcs an eyebrow before moving it to the other side. He continues, with his violet eyes on me, to straighten out the tree so it looks more even.

Eventually he sighs and addresses me as he works: “You could have asked me if you were curious about Italy.”

“Oh, I don’t think I could have, Mr. Avido!” I balance on the balls of my feet and rock back and forth. “You’re such a MODERN man, quick to move past the dregs of old tradition!”

“Your butchering of my words isn’t needed, Miss Alice,” says Avido. “Please tell me you didn’t buy one of those touristy handbooks…”

“But this is such an ancient country—”

Avido interrupts me with loud laughter.

“An ancient country? That’s rich, little mouse! Italy has barely been unified for a decade!” his smile warps as he takes a step back to make sure he’s spreading my decorations evenly around the tree.

“If you want old tradition, Miss Alice, then you should have stayed in Steel London.”

“But I didn’t stay in Steel London, Avido—” I drop the honorific, hoping that he notices as I hug his arm, pressing the warmth of my body against him. “I came to Italy with my Boss.”

I look away, muttering in the hopes he doesn’t hear me too clearly: “The man I… love.”

I feel Avido shift to look down at me, and I look up at him with cute ferocity burning in my puffed cheeks. “So, I don’t want a British Christmas! I want you to show me what an Italian Christmas is like, so I can celebrate it with you!”

Any hint of affection that might have glowed dimly in Avido’s eyes is cut as he curls his lip. “Don’t push your cheeks out like that, it makes you look like a child.”

“Mr. Avido…” I sigh and step back.

He looks away before a smirk crosses his handsome features. “Show you what an Italian Christmas is like? Haha… Catholic. That’s what it looks like.”

“I could have guessed, since you insisted on waiting until today to put the tree up,” I say. “December 8th, a holy day celebrating the Virgin Mary. I guess even an ass like you still follows some traditions, huh?” I put on my best wicked grin.

“…You did buy one of those guide books, didn’t you…” Avido says as he pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Out of my own paycheck, at least,” I give him a wink.

Avido looks at me out of the corner of his eye for a long time before relenting the argument in a sigh. He glances out the window at the setting sun. “All right, then. … Miss Alice.”

He gives me his light bow, his features settling into a polite smile. “Would you accompany me to the Market tonight?”

He’s seething with irritation behind his composed exterior, and I can’t resist giving him a cocky smile as I take his offered arm. “I would simply love to, Mr. Avido!”

***

Back when I first came here, Avido was quick to talk about how backwater Palermo is compared to Steel London. I replied that everywhere is backwater compared to Steel London, and he would only continue to be disappointed if he continues comparing.

Not much has changed since we first arrived in Palermo. Avido still looks at the gorgeous architecture and vibrant streets with disgust wrinkling his handsome face. I don’t agree with him at all. This place is gorgeous, like a postcard straight out of a fancy art gallery.

But it isn’t Steel London.

And because it isn’t Steel London, it reminds Avido that he had to escape and go into hiding. What’s worse, he’s back in the city he was born in.

To him, this place is a sign of his weakness, despite it being the capital of Sicily and a thriving hotbed that he can profit off of.

But I’m not going to let his moping ruin my Christmas. Whether he likes it or not, I’m going to get the best out of this city!

… For him, too, though you’d never get me to admit it.

I squeeze his arm, leaning my head against his shoulder.

“I think this is the first time you’ve taken me on a date since we’ve been here,” I say sweetly.

“Oh? I’m fairly certain I take you out quite often, Miss Alice.”

“Taking me with you to business meetings doesn’t count, my Boss.”

He always gets the cutest smile when I call him that, like a little boy being crowned emperor of the playground.

I stop him and walk in front of him, smoothing out the front of his vest.

“We’re usually in a hurry then, and I hardly get time to treat you like a real beau…” I purse my lips in a cute pout.

Avido’s shoulders shake with laughter. “How pathetic! I didn’t realize you felt so neglected!”

I reach up and hold his scarf on both sides, using the leverage to pull him down closer to my height.

“I always feel neglected when you don’t have your eyes on me, Mr. Avido.” I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips to the corner of his mouth.

“My greedy little mouse,” he purrs as he tilts his head towards mine. But instead of kissing me, he straightens back up and adjusts his scarf. “But you could have had all of this back at the house. No, instead you insisted that I show you an Italian Christmas…”

He offers his arm to me again. “So let’s keep this outing civilized, shall we?”

“You sound a little on-edge, yourself,” I say, but I take his arm and walk next to him like a good girl.

I read in a letter from Polly that Queen Victoria had announced a grand Christmas Market to line the streets in celebration of Steel London’s triumph over the Nautilus.

Though the Market Avido and I arrive at is probably nothing in comparison to that, it’s filled with a nostalgic energy that Steel London can’t begin to dream of. Loud vendors in wooden stalls shout for attention, the thick smell of raisins and cinnamon fills the air with thoughts of Christmas, and for the first time this city really feels like home.  

“So noisy…” Avido scoffs quietly.

I look up at him with bright eyes. “I LOVE it!”

A mild look of surprise crosses Avido’s face for a moment before I take his hand and lead him into the crowd.

“Alice…” his voice gets dark, but I pay his fussing no mind as I half-drag him from stand to stand, taking in all the bright colors like a kid at, well, Christmas.

“I don’t know what I want to eat first…”

“To eat?” Avido arches an eyebrow. “Would you rather go to a café or—“

“Nope!” I point at the source of that intoxicating smell. “I want to try that.”

Avido stares at me. “A girl like you… I thought you would be attracted to sweets and candies. But, no, instead you seek out arancini.”

“You know I have a big appetite.” I pause to poke Avido in the stomach.

I look at the golden fried balls of something-or-another on display and salivate.

“Yes, when it comes to everything, it seems,” he says with a deep sigh. “Very well, if you wish to gorge yourself on common street food instead of sampling—“

“Sounds good!” I beam at the vendor. “Two, please!”

Avido is staring at me blankly, and continues to do so until I take his hand and deposit one of the balls in it.

“Oh man, this is good!”

I wasn’t expecting it to be filled with rice! The texture is almost creamy, making it taste more like a pasta than a grain.  

“Mmmm, there’s cheese in here too! I love street food, I love Christmas Markets, I love Sicily!”

Avido continues to watch silently as I chow down. Eventually, I look at him out of the corner of my eye. “Oh come on, don’t tell me you’re too stuffy for good food, Mr. Avido!”

“You don’t have to be so loud,” he says. “I assure you, your enthusiasm is obvious even without the yelling. For example, Miss Alice, you have some rice on your cheek.”

“Ah, shit!”

He rolls his eyes at my foul language, but his scoff sounds like he was trying very hard to hide a laugh. He eventually relents and joins me, and the two of us sit by a fountain in the center of the square. The mist would be refreshing on a summer day, but in December (as mild as it is) it feels a little strange.

God, the man sitting next to me is so ridiculously sexy. He’s just staring quietly over the square like he’s sizing it up, like it’s an enemy he’ll have to take down. Shadows cast by streetlamps emphasize the bags under his eyes, reminding me of how hard he’s been working. Things really are different than they were back in London.

Not that he wasn’t always a hard worker or anything!

It’s just, back when I first met him, he was on top of the world. It looked like everything came so easily to him, you know?

But it wasn’t like that at all. Avido had literally clawed his way out of a place that he never wanted to come back to.

… And now he’s back, and he’s been working ever since. Well, he’s been working my ass off too, at least, and the asses of all the men who weren’t too chickenshit to follow him out of London.

But tonight he doesn’t have to work. Tonight he’s on a date with me, the cutest girl in the Mafia! (Shirley who?)

“I have a question for you, Mr. Avido,” I say. “I see Santa decorations at the Market, but I also keep on seeing these cute little witches. Are these old Halloween decorations?”

“What?” Avido scoffs. “Your little guidebook didn’t tell you about La Befana?”

I huff. “I’m sure it did, I just… must have missed it, s’all.”

Avido looks down at me with that cocky smile of his before shrugging. “Then I suppose you can look it up when we get home.”

“Oh come on, Boss…” I scoot closer to him, nudging my knees against him. “Don’t be pouty like that.”

“Pouty? Is that what you think this is?” he raises an eyebrow.

“Sulky, then?”

Avido shakes his head. “La Befana is a witch who visits children on Epiphany Eve. That’s right, when you little British brats were able to open your presents at Christmas…” he pauses to smooth a stray hair from my ponytail. “Us good little Italian children had to wait until Twelfth Night.”

My eyes open so wide that I’m afraid they might roll out of my skull. “You didn’t get presents at Christmas?!”

Avido keeps on straightening out my hair, his smile looking surprisingly warm as he takes in my reaction. It makes me a little embarrassed.

“No. We’d have a great feast, but presents didn’t come until Epiphany. Hmmm…”

He gently strokes my cheek with his thumb, his expression dark and playful. “Maybe if you continue to misbehave, little mouse, I’ll have you wait until Epiphany, too.”

“Mr. Avido… you’re so mean to me…”

He waits until he has me helpless in his gaze before he calmly lets go of me and stands up.

“Well? You wanted to see what our Christmas is like, didn’t you?”

I smile, realizing that he didn’t notice what he said. ‘Our’ Christmas. I guess you can’t separate your identity from your homeland completely, no matter how much you want to.

I decide to keep the secret to myself, though. Mr. Avido would totally get huffy and say something about how I’m being preposterous or some other fancy-ass insult.

“Right, coming!” I run after him and hug his arm cutely. “What’s next, Boss?”

“Presepi.”

I look up at him, waiting for an explanation. He doesn’t offer one, though, just keeps on walking until he spots something ahead. He looks down at me and tilts his head, gesturing for me to walk on.

What Avido was looking towards was a little village made up of pretty dolls and wooden buildings, tiny trees and all kinds of animals. It takes up an entire wall of the market square and is lit up by multiple lanterns decked in ribbon.

One particularly humble-looking building near the front of the display glows with beautiful angels hovering over it. A gorgeous doll with dark hair is leaning over an empty manger, and next to her stands a bearded man watching over them both.

“Presepi… nativities?” I look back at Avido, who nods. I keep on staring at him, and he stares right back at me, until I finally gesture for him to join me.

With a dramatic sigh he walks over beside me and looks down at the little village of Bethlehem.

“The manger is empty,” I say.

“Of course it is,” he replies, rolling his eyes. “It isn’t Christmas yet. The Christ Child hasn’t been born.”

“It seems lonely without the baby,” I say.

This makes Avido laugh and put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be too disappointed! I’ll take you back out on the 24th so you won’t have to worry about lonely dolls, how’s that?”

He pulls me to his side, an amused smirk on his face. “In some ways you are quite the woman, and yet every now and then you surprise me by saying the most childish things!”

“And you think it’s cute, right?” I tilt my head.

“Not at all!” Avido laughs. “It only reminds me that there’s still a lot for me to teach you.”  

But his grip on my shoulder is surprisingly tender for him.

I look back at the scene and the little figures that Avido was being so mean to.

“We don’t have to spend so much time around this one, they are all over the city. Every house has a Presepe.”

I look up at him. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

He smirks and looks like he’s about to say something when we hear a rumble. I look around and protectively move in front of Avido. When I begin to reach for my pistol, Avido waves me away.

“It’s the Presepe vivente, they’ve just lit a bonfire.”

“Vivente? What’s that?”

Avido looks down at me.

“Maybe I’ll just show you, since you seemed disappointed by the empty manger.”

Instead of offering me his arm, he threads my fingers with his and brings them to his lips.

“However, Miss Alice, I do want you to consider Italian lessons.”

My face flushes.

“After all, you said you wanted to be a part of this place, didn’t you? Learning the language is only natural, after all…” his lips curve into a slow smile. “Besides…”

He leans down and whispers something into my ear, something dark and slow and sensual. I can’t understand him, but it sounds like pure, unfiltered sex.

Avido pulls back slightly to look at me and my expression.

“See… with lessons, you would realize that I was just reciting the ingredients of the arancini we just ate. Really, little mouse, your ears didn’t perk at the word ‘mozzarella’?”

Well, that was mortifying.

“Oh, don’t pout!” he says with a laugh. “If you didn’t make such cute expressions, I wouldn’t want to tease you so often.”

“For some reason, Mr. Avido, I don’t believe you. Not one bit. In fact, I think at least fifty percent of our relationship is you teasing me.”

Avido’s smile widens, and his words drip with insincerity. “Hm, and what would the other fifty percent be? … No, such discussions of blood and sweat are ill-suited for these sacred icons to hear. Come, before it gets too crowded there.”

Avido leads me down a narrow cobblestone street hung with pretty baubles designed to look like stars. The smell of fire and hay is thick, but not unpleasant. It feels nostalgic, somehow, though I’m a bit surprised when we turn a corner and a donkey suddenly brays at me.

… Okay, when I say ‘a bit surprised’ I mean ‘I scream a phrase that would make my mother blush and jump a good meter back.’

This makes Avido burst out laughing, a hand over his stomach as he doesn’t even try to hold it back.

“Do you miss Steel London yet, little mouse?!”

I huff at Avido before looking back at the donkey and straightening my dress out. It’s not just a donkey, though, the more people I see the more I notice that they’re dressed in things like robes and sandals.

The street eventually opens up into another square, this one smaller and more intimate than the one the market was in. A large bonfire crackles with many villagers huddled around it for warmth. There are carolers bundled in cloths leading horses and carrying hay.

“A Living Nativity,” says Avido. “It’s a little more impressive than those dolls, isn’t it?”

I look back at Avido, who’s looking around the square with an expression I don’t really understand. He looked like that when we first got in the city, too. It’s like nostalgia, only a nostalgia that someone would rather forget.

“Mr. Avido?” I reach out to touch his arm.

“Yes?” Avido  responds a little too quickly.

“It’s getting late,” I say. “We can head back if you want.”

Avido sticks his nose in the air as though he had just gotten a whiff of shit.

“Don’t be foolish,” he says, moving past me towards the townfolk. He doesn’t look at any of them, his eyes are on the Holy Couple near the back.

I’m not really religious, and I doubt that Avido is (even as he pauses to bow to the Holy Couple), but I still feel my chest tighten when I look at them. Mary is dark and exquisite, looking from the spectators to the gentleman playing as Joseph. Saying she’s a looker is putting it mildly, and I catch my breath in my throat as I stare next to Avido.

“The most beautiful woman in the city is always chosen to be Mary,” he says. “The most beautiful and kind, devoted, gentle…”

Ah, so that’s it.

His voice always gets like this when he talks about his mother, tight—like it hurts for him to speak.

It’s the only time he sounds weak.

I hug his arm, leaning my cheek against his shoulder as he watches.

“You wouldn’t be half-bad yourself if you weren’t so crass,” he muses idly.

“Hey!” I let go of him and cross my arms, but seeing that smirk of his is still a relief. He puts an arm around my shoulder and rests his lips on my crown, something he only does when we’re alone.

“Boss…?”

“Hm?”

“What happened to being civilized?”

I feel him smile against my skin, his body trembling slightly from laughter.

“A man can’t be overcome by emotion at the sight of something as beautiful as the Christmas miracle?”

I raise an eyebrow, but don’t say anything as he straightens up and adjusts his tie.

Eventually, there’s a murmur as a shepherdess brings in a swaddled bundle and lays it on the bed of hay in front of the Mary and Joseph. The baby is as plump as a piglet, snotty and whining at being separated from his real mother.

“It must be really inconvenient getting a real baby to do this,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “Wouldn’t a fake one be just as effective?”

Avido doesn’t say anything, just watches as Mary gently strokes the baby’s head, trying to get him to calm down.

“Boss?”

Avido isn’t listening to me, staring at the baby with an intense gaze. It spits up a few bubbles, and to my surprise I see a warm smile tugging at the edge of Avido’s mouth.

“Hey, Boss,” I repeat, rubbing his shoulder. “You’re staring pretty hard at that baby. Plan on swiping it or something?”

Avido closes his eyes, that hint of a smile spreading across his face. He squeezes my shoulder and looks down at me with an expression of… something. I’m not good at describing it. It’s kind of weird.

“My dear Miss Alice, why would I steal a baby when I could simply have one of my own?”

Oh.

Yeah, I broke. I can just stare up at him with slightly-parted lips and a red face. He gives me a light bow before turning and walking away from the Presepe vitale, and for a little bit all that I can do is look after him.

When I realize that he intends on leaving without me, I trot after him. I’m sinking in the embarrassed silence, while Avido is smiling the most I’ve seen him since we’ve been out.

“You know, it’s not very nice to tease girls about things like that,” I mutter.

“And it’s not very polite to mumble,” Avido says with a smirk. “Besides, whatever gave you the impression that I was teasing?”

Yeah, I can totally feel my heart pinging around my ribcage like a toy ball.

The walk back to the house is a quiet one, something Avido doesn’t seem to mind in the least. He knows that he’s the reason behind the silence, so he’s basking in it.

Once inside, he helps me out of my coat and I walk back into the gallery where we have our tree.

It still looks pretty lopsided, so I work on evening it out while Avido walks by. Of course, my definition of “evening it out” is to add more ornaments to his side. Take that, you gorgeous jackass.

After I put up a few ornaments, I feel something cool press against my cheek and I jump back. Avido’s standing nearby, holding a glass of wine, that mischievous smile still on his face. It would be very attractive if it weren’t at my expense.

“Still so jumpy!” he says with a laugh. “I really must have given you a fright back at the Presepe vivente. Haha, poor thing…”

I take the offered glass, still fiddling with an ornament as I put on my cutest pout.

“No, I’m okay,” I say with a shrug. “I was just surprised, s’all.”

“Truly?” Avido quirks an eyebrow at me.

I feel my face heating up again.

“I mean, yeah, I don’t really… mind…” I laugh nervously. “I don’t mind jokes like that, I mean! About… babies and… family… uh…”

Shit, what am I saying all of a sudden?

Avido just smiles, almost to himself, and gives me a casual shrug before walking into another room.

“Mr. Avido? Hey!”

I follow the sound of his dry laughter to see him in the drawing room where he usually hosts his business meetings. I hear the click of a lock opening, and then he pulls open a chest of drawers.

“What are you doing, Boss?”

“Oh, little mouse…” he pauses to laugh. “Childish, womanly, either way you have the uncanny ability to charm me.”

I just stare at him. That smile of is as cold as usual, but that twinkle in his eye makes me nervous. It makes my heart race.

He sets an old and worn box down on the table and opens it. Faded newspaper wavers like it will disintegrate if it’s touched the wrong way, but Avido’s gloved fingers are reverent enough to open it without any problems.

“I told you that every house has a Presepe,” he says.

“Yep, and I called you a liar when you said this one doesn’t.”

“You were right.”

I blink at him a couple of times before slowly sinking into a chair across from him.

Looking down into the box, Avido suddenly looks smaller than usual.

“… It could hardly be called a Presepe, though,” he says. The charm dripping from his voice disappears. His throat sounds tight again as, one by one, he begins to pull out small wooden figures. They’re crude, barely carved pieces of firewood, almost looking like---

“… Did you make these?”

Avido sighs.

“A very small boy did, one who was tired of his mother not having a proper Christmas because of his father’s foolishness.”

His laugh sounds like a strangled attempt not to cry.

“Look, I forgot… there’s even sheep… haha… hahaha….!”

He pulls out a piece of wood that is balancing on four tiny little legs, one of them shorter than the rest.

“Pathetic, isn’t it…”

It looks like he’s about to strike the poor thing, so I quickly lean forward and grab it, cradling it to my chest.

“I think that little boy sounds very cute,” I say. “I would’ve loved to give him a kiss on the cheek.”

Avido shakes his head.

“Well, Miss Alice, you’re welcome to do with these as you see fit,” he gives a casual shrug. “I have no use for them. They were just taking up space.”

“Liar,” I repeat myself.

But I still stand up and look inside the box. They were wrapped with such care, and the thought of little Avido working so hard on them makes my heart swell.

“This one here,” I pick one up. “Is this Mary?”

“That’s a Wise Man,” Avido mutters.

I very quietly put it back down, but tilt my head when I see that there is something else underneath it.

“Hm? Oh…” Avido’s eyes widen slightly when I pull it out: faded paper wrapped in a pretty ribbon, clearly priceless to whoever had received it.

I look at him and watch as he laughs. “Go ahead. Just old memories. You won’t be able to read most of it, anyway.” He then cracks his neck and glances out the window. “It’s getting late… I’m going to go to bed. Are you finished?”

I look at him holding my empty wine glass and nod. He moves past me and pauses before bending down to give me a kiss on the cheek.

It’s cold, but not the aloof sort of coldness I had gotten used to. It’s like he’s trying to hold back all of the emotion that had built up inside of him throughout the day.

“Avido…?” I turn around to look after him, but he goes on without a word.

I look back to the paper and gingerly unwrap the ribbon.

A child’s handwriting in a language I cannot read.

But one word does jump out to me: ‘Mamma’.

Realizing that I was holding something very precious, I slowly look over the words, taking in every pen stroke. Though the language might be foreign to me, the love is still obvious. Avido’s mother must have treasured this letter, and why wouldn’t she? It’s so sweet. I bet he was such a precious little boy…

And there, at the bottom, another word I understand. Well, not a word, but a name. His signature. Not ‘Avido Crudele’, but the name his beloved mother had given him when he was born.

It’s my turn to be greedy… I’m keeping that name all for myself.

***

“Boss?”

I open the door to our bedroom. Avido’s already in bed, his bare back to me. I look at him, at the orange glow of my candle casting shadows over his body and the scars he earned when he was just starting his career in the underworld. I’ve kissed each of those scars dozens of times, but my mouth still aches for more whenever I see them. Damn attractive bastard.

He acts tough, but I know he’s had a long day. I wish he had a siren or something that would blare whenever something I say or do drags up his painful memories.

It might sound a bit obvious, but the guy really, REALLY loved his mom. You don’t dedicate your life to ruining one specific mafia family for just anyone, you know.

A grudge that he can never let go of.

And I’m a dumbass who was like, “Show me an Italian Christmas!”

Show me those traditions that you treasured, Avido, it’s not like it’d rip up your insides or anything. God, I’m a dumbass.

And then I hear something that immediately makes me feel better: a very specific meow. It starts as a rolling trill before ending as a very high-pitched, needy mewl.

“Mia signorina… bel micetto…”

Ugh, he always gushes over Angiola like that. She eats it up, too, I can hear her purring all the way from over here.

Well, he doesn’t sound too torn up, anyway. I quickly get undressed before sliding into the sheets next to him.

… This is awkward. I don’t know if I should put my arms around him or go back-to-back with him. Ugh, so much for trying to be smooth. I finally decide to roll onto my side and scooch up against him like a good big spoon should. His skin feels so good against my cheek, cool and soft.

I finally begin to relax and lazily wrap my arms around his torso when I hear a familiar fussing and movement and suddenly find two large eyes staring at me.

The little brat actually climbed on Avido to glare down at me!

“He’s my boyfriend, Angiola,” I mumble into Avido’s skin. “I thought we had reached an understanding.”

Angiola trills at me disapprovingly before reaching her plush paws down to prod at my arms.

“Nope, not letting go,” I say. “Tough luck, pussycat.”

She trills again before getting a good foothold and sliding down Avido’s back, pooling in-between us and purring as though she was in the most comfortable spot in the world—firmly wedged between me and my Boss!

“Oh! Really?! Are you comfy?”

Angiola just purrs and nudges her head against my breast for warmth, flicking her tail idly.

“And now you’re acting all cute, I see how it is…”

I sigh and look up at Avido, noticing that his back is trembling as he barely manages to hold onto his laughter.

“Avido, we need to get your cat a boyfriend!” I whine.

Avido turns slightly to look at me, Angiola whining in protest as her comfortable spot is adjusted.

He looks so fucking hot with his hair messy and hanging in his face like this, still damp from bathing. Angiola doesn’t seem to appreciate getting his wet hair in her fur as he turns over, though.

I stick my tongue out at her as her eyes widen in shock. Jostled AND wet? Oh, poor baby!

“Oh? Are you telling me you want a handsome tomcat for Christmas?”

“I’m saying that she needs a handsome tomcat to flirt with so she’ll leave MY handsome tomcat alone!”

This makes Avido laugh so hard that I see tears pooling at the edges of his eyes.

Angiola decides that she’s had enough and lets out a disgruntled yowl before standing up and inelegantly climbing over Avido to snuggle up against his back. I don’t waste any time snuggling up against Avido’s chest as he still tries to regain some of his composure.

Finally I hear his breathing slow, and I look up at him with all the cuteness I can muster.

“I’ve decided that we can have a British Christmas if you want, Mr. Avido.”

“Oh, my little Christmas mouse doesn’t want to wait until Epiphany for her presents?”

He wraps an arm around my shoulders, making me feel warmer than any blanket could. I love our height difference, it makes it so easy for me to rest my ear against his chest to hear his heartbeat, as cool and even as he is.

“That’s not why and you know it,” I say. “I kinda made an ass out of myself today, Boss.”

“Tch…” Avido begins threading his fingers through my hair again, pulling it out of its ponytail so it can flow freely down my back. “Don’t give yourself that much credit, Alice. Whether those things remained locked up or not didn’t matter in the least. Besides, I’ve worked beyond the limitations I had as a child. If I wanted to, I could have a Presepe that would put the Market’s to shame… no, not even the Pope’s could compare!”

Yeah, he’s getting back to his usual self. Whenever he talks about fineries and things he can buy, it usually means he’s in a better mood. He isn’t named “Avido” for nothing.

“Maybe we could put it up together,” I say as I begin to idly circle his chest with my index finger. “You know, make a tradition ourselves…?”

Avido laughs again (though he quickly stifles it when Angiola sleepily mewls at him). “Together? Not if it ends up looking like the tree! You’d probably try to stuff the manger with tinsel!”

“What? I wouldn’t do that!” I puff out my cheeks, only to wince when he pokes one of them to make it deflate.

“You absolutely would,” he says. He pulls my head back to his chest—god he smells so good—and sighs.

“What did you do with the box?” he asks with a low voice.

“I put it back in the dresser. I don’t have the key, but… I thought you would prefer to have it there. The letter’s in there, too.”

Avido pets my head as reward.

It’s weird, I specifically sought out big scary men because I enjoyed being chastised and yelled at by them, but right now, I’m so happy to be pet like this!

“What did you think of the letter?” he asks with an amused lilt.

“You know I couldn’t read it,” I say.

“So, will you take me up on my offer of Italian lessons?”

“Ohh, you didn’t say that YOU would be my teacher,” I smirk. “That changes things up quite a bit. I’d love to be your cute little student!”

Avido looks down at me for a moment before rolling onto his back. “Maybe a tutor would be best, after all… I doubt you would be able to concentrate if you’re acting out like this already.”

“You’re so cruel to me!” I whine, hugging onto his arm.

“My name is ‘Crudele’, not ‘Cortese’, Miss Alice,” he says before a smirk plays at his gorgeous lips. “I’m surprised you didn’t have anything to say about the signature on that letter, though.”

I shrug, crawling a bit onto him so I can lay my head on his chest. Angiola already got that idea, though, and the two of us stare at one another before eventually deciding to share (a rarity brought on only by sleepiness).

“It suits you,” I say. “But I think I like ‘Avido Crudele’ better.”

“Oh?” Avido’s voice is dripping with sarcasm. “I’m glad that you approve.”

Angiola stretches and yawns, her cute face contorting into an abomination of teeth like cats’ mouths always do when they yawn.

“Night, Boss,” I say.

“Mm,” is the dismissive noise I get in response.

As sleep begins to drag me down, though, I feel Avido begin to pet my hair again.

“Sogni d’oro.”

***

You know, it sucks trying to sleep when a cat keeps on flicking her tail on your face and trying to push you away with delicate little paw pads.

Yeah, I’m definitely asking the Boss for a tomcat for Christmas. One that will make Angiola feel just like I feel whenever I see…

Oh.

I quickly step out of the way and peer into the gallery, where under the Christmas tree Avido is bending down to show something to Angiola.

He’s facing away from me, so I can’t really see what it is, but it looks very small. She sniffs at it before sitting down and mewling at her owner.

“Well, I have her approval at least,” Avido stands back up and turns towards me, smirking and pocketing a small box.

A very small velvet box.

“G-Good morning,” is all I can stupidly mumble.

“I was just thinking about what you said last night,” says Avido. “About how you prefer my name as ‘Crudele’.”

He smiles cruelly, knowing what an impact these words will have on me:

“I was thinking about how fortunate you are to feel that way, as ‘Crudele’ is the name you will eventually have.”

My feet are stuck to the floor, and I’m staring at him dumbly as he walks towards me.

“I-Is that what that box…?” my voice cracks as I point to his pocket with a trembling finger.

“Oh, that?”

He looks at my eyes and reaches into his pocket, tilting his head as though in deep thought.

“I’ve decided to wait until Epiphany to give you that present,” he finally says. “Just like a good Italian girl should.”

I continue to stand there, frozen, even as Avido drapes my coat over my shoulders.

“Well, I believe I said something about getting a Presepe that would make the Pope gnash his teeth with jealousy, didn’t I?” he cocks an eyebrow. “I assume you want to help me make my selection.”

He bends down and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

I spring to life and give him my cutest smile. “You got it, Boss!”

[plumbobsandllamas]

SEASONS TAG 🌻

Thank you for the tag(s) @racingllama​! I tag @omg-puddingpie​ @chipmunksims​ @awkward--simmer​ @memoirsofasim​ and @mangoruby​. You can pick either tag, or answer both if you feel like it!

Questions under the cut!

TAG #1

1. Which season are you going to play with first?

Spring! That was where I always started in The Sims 2 and 3, so it feels like the natural thing to do.

2. From what you’ve seen in the trailer, what are you most excited about? The gardening career, and those fancy looking umbrellas! ☂️

3. What’s your favourite season IRL? Definitely spring! It’s lovely seeing everything come back to life after the winter.

4. What’s your favourite flower/plant? I love succulents. I have one in my room that I’ve dubbed The Succ™.

5. Are you going to create a new sim/family or are you going to keep your current household? Current household. I’ll probably play around with my Simself to test things out and then switch back over to my legacy.

6. What would you like to see in this new pack that we haven’t seen yet? Extreme weather! Snowstorms, torrential rain, heatwaves. I’d love to see the weather have a real impact on my Sims lives. 

7. How do you feel about not having a new neighbourhood? Not bothered. Seasons will affect the entire game, so I’d rather they put all of their energy into making them interesting.

8. Snow, rain, sun or wind? Sunshine!

9. Favourite refreshing drink in the summer? Ice coffee 💯

10. Favourite hot drink in the winter? Probably the egg nog lattes you can get from Starbucks. 

11. Walk through the forest or by the beach? Either!

12. Swimming pool or ocean? Definitely the ocean. (As long as there aren’t any sharks 👀)

13. Where would you like to travel if you could leave right now for a week? I’d love to go somewhere tropical and luxurious, like Bora Bora. 

14. How is the weather today? So-so. We’ve had a warm few days, but clouds are gathering!

15. What new traits would you like to see in the new pack? Something we haven’t seen before. We had a bunch of Seasons-related traits in TS3 and I hardly used them.

16. Do you like to play with supernatural creatures like vampires and aliens? And if so, would you like to have witches/fairies/elves? I like to play with them occasionally, but I could certainly live without them. I generally prefer realism.

17. What is your favourite thing to do during winter? Stay indoors with lots of blankets and a cup of tea!

18. …during spring? Walking outdoors.

19. …during summer? Swimming 🌊

20. …during autumn? Walking again. The autumn colours are so pretty.

21. Have you already pre-ordered Seasons? If you haven’t, are you going to pre-order it or wait until it comes out? After the fiasco that occurred when I pre-ordered Cats and Dogs, I’m not going to bother for now at least. Planning to search around for a discount first!

22. Which neighbourhood are you going to play first with Seasons? Any! They’ll all have seasons, after all.

23. Do you listen to music while playing? If so, what are your favourite songs to listen to? I listen to the in-game radio stations whilst playing, and Spotify whilst editing and posting. My Sims sleep with the stereo on 🎵

24. What’s your favourite thing to do in The Sims? Playing with families! I love generational gameplay.

25. What’s your favourite pack? Probably Cats and Dogs. Pets are essential! 💕

26. What pack would you like to see next? A mix between TS2 Bon Voyage and TS3 World Adventures. I’d love a bunch of different holiday destinations for my Sims to explore.

TAG #2

1. What is your favorite season?  

Spring!

2. Do you prefer warmer or colder weather?  

Warmer. But not too warm.

3. What do you do on a rainy day?  

The usual. You get used to it after a while lol

4. How is a typical winter where you live? Cold or not?  

Pretty mild compared to some places. It hovers somewhere around freezing.

5. Have you ever experienced snow?  

Yep!

6. True or false? “I LOVE RAIN!”  

You kind of have to love it when you live in England ☔️

7. What is your go-to food in the summer?  

Ice coffee is a “food”, right?

8. What is your favourite ice cream flavour?  

Matcha! Failing that, probably mint or vanilla.

9. Coffee, tea or cocoa?

Tea! I like coffee too, though.

10. Describe your favourite seasonal clothing item!  

Bobble hats and scarves.

11. What is your favourite holiday?  

Bonfire Night. I love the smell of bonfires and watching the fireworks.

12. If you were a season, which one would you be?

Autumn! I have red hair and I like to hibernate, what can I say  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[silkandconvalescencerpg]

I’m honestly a little in disbelief that this has finally made its way into the light, and I apologize for how long it took for me to simply put this together. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy this little look into ballast and may it spur on any of your own musings!

001. OUT OF CHARACTER,

NAME/ALIAS + AGE. ↳ I’m Dea, eighteen, and my three favorite films are The Mummy, Moulin Rouge!, and Dead Poets Society (with Brother Bear rounding out as my closely-lagging fourth). I like to think they adequately spell out my character, if anything, representing the very core of my soul. (Evie O’Connell was my first crush and forevermore the love of my life, if that makes my personality any clearer.)

TIMEZONE + ACTIVITY. ↳ PST, and as for my activity, I try to be online as often as I can, and that’ll be a lot easier now that we’ve transitioned into the summer season. However, I still have work and that’ll take up a decent portion of my time, though I try to be as transparent as I can in terms of letting you all know when I’ll be absent from the main and such, and will continue to be so when game-play begins. Hopefully I manage to achieve the right balance between the main and James’ account!

TRIGGERS + PRONOUNS. ↳ I go by she/her, but have no problem with being referred to as they/them. Regarding triggers, visuals of excessive gore are pretty much the worst of what I can take.

002. IN CHARACTER INFORMATION,

MUSE DESIRED. ↳ Ballast & James Sirius Potter.

            JAMES, a gentle curse, an exhale, soft and affectionate and incapable of being said without a smile tugging at the corners of one’s mouth. spit in vexation, cursed in crimson-tinged anger, sighed in misled adoration, hiccuped in between gut-wrenching laughs. your mother whispers it (worry creasing lines on her otherwise youthful face, fingers twitching, longing to reach out to stroke your head like you loved when you could still fit in her hands) when she thinks you can’t hear and yells it (anxiety toppling into frustration, showering you in the spitfire that scorches in the center of her belly, distinct to the windswept fire of ginny weasley) when she knows you can’t hear anything but. your father, eighteen years of experience hardly denting the habit, sounds out the syllables of your name with a reverence (half respect for the father he never knew and half tender disbelief for the son he still can’t believe he had a part in creating) and groans them with an age-old tiredness (his scar may not pain him any longer, but you sure do). the very utterance of your name is followed by an exuberant eye roll, high in fashion with both your sister and brother. james, james, james. does it belong to you?

            SIRIUS, a bullet of a name. there are more legends than facts surrounding your namesake, and god, when did they become yours to swallow? you may not carry his blood (pure, black, rotten to the core) but your pout is sculpted from the same lips as his; your hair is as monstrously notorious and decadent; that gruff bark of laughter rings oh-so alike, except he was the grim and you’re a puppy; a leather jacket, illusory with the phantom heat of his flesh, and you can’t quite decide if the weight is a comforting warmth or if it burns, heavy and scathing. i mean, really ⏤ is it still just as funny when your telltale “sirius is my middle name” line is matched with a wince?

            POTTER, both a tragedy and a blessing. out of your unlucky lot, perhaps this is the worst card. your blood is tinged with the greats, the giants of wizarding lore, potters, and weasleys, and evans’ (singularly gifted witch that she was), and just about everything fucking else in between, because sometimes practically the entirety of the wizarding world wants to snatch their own piece and more the pity, you let them. resentment curls in your belly, curdling and hot, warring with the warmth of your love, the kind that seeps tender heat into one’s aching muscles, like the gentle caress of curling inside a bath, of a candle’s gentle flare in the center of your darkened home, rain softly wailing outside. it makes you want to weep; it makes you want to cry and scream and claw yourself inside out; it makes your heart want to burst from love, from bone-chattering laughter, from adoration, from responsibilities to ghosts, from the weight of it all.

            (  B A L L A S T  ), the solid stone beneath, the foundation everyone can’t help but stand upon. (and that’s it, folks, lmao.)

FACE CLAIM. ↳ Xavier Serrano.

GENDER + ORIENTATIONS. ↳ Cis male, he/him, and bisexual biromantic.

DATE OF BIRTH + BLOOD STATUS + YEAR. ↳ Born OCTOBER 30TH, 2005, as a HALFBLOOD, and currently enrolled as a SEVENTH YEAR at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

            This birth date falls under the SCORPIO star sign, in addition to being the day before Halloween, also known as the death day of his grandparents. Irony is a sharp bite to the ass, and this one particularly stings. He’s on the very edge of spilling into the sorrowful night, one brimming with the ghosts of old, beasts of legends, terrors lurking in the encompassing shadows. What is better: to be on the precipice of disaster (everyone sharply aware of just how close he came to being a masochist’s wet dream: firstborn son of Harry Potter emerging into the world on the night of his parents’ anniversary of being murdered; oh, our hearts are positively aching in bittersweet agony) or to narrowly miss another chance to align himself with the ghost who will forever haunt him?

            The exact date was chosen carefully, for the image of James being born in the high tide of the ever-haunting month, on the edge of leave-strewn and rust-tinted November and swarmed in the absolute magic that encompasses October, is one that is so wholly him. One might imagine him in the sweetness of spring, chaste and rosy and so heartwarmingly raw. Or perhaps in the heat of summer, where he is gold, gold, gold, and so unnervingly bright, it blinds you with its scorching radiance. Even winter could be his home, with its stark bitterness and empty promises of warmth and protection in a candle-lit home, cold snow blanketing all life. Yet, the season where leaves dance in the swirling winds and ugly beasts emerge into the night with the beauty of the divine is the one that holds his heart in its grip; fall, fall, fall, and he does.

            Moreover, this analysis cemented his star sign completely ⏤⏤ attracts people by: depth and allure, emotional bonding, safeguarding and undying protection, intellect and mystique, loyalty and slowly revealed vulnerability, ability to inspire inner confidence &  loses people by: antagonism, control and possession, withdrawal and reactivity, emotional coldness and emotional paralysis, self-righteousness, disconnecting privacy, staunch defence of personal ideologies.

HOUSE + ANALYSIS. ↳ GRYFFINDOR, and it almost seems a disservice to the gods above, to the spite burning in his blood and scorching his mind, begging to be contrary just for the sake of a rebellion, a piece of him that deviates from the path he was destined to crawl. Why couldn’t he be different? Why did his heart burst with the same roaring pound of a lion’s and bleed with the same passion and obnoxious sense of self? Courage was a pillar he conquered within his first breath, and nerve was the fire to his blood’s gasoline, lighting up with a stunning vengeance. But, oh no, these are not the grounds upon which his sorting was based on ⏤ if anything, his undying belief in morality, of all stupid things, is what so clearly planted him within the lions den. Even more so, it’s the fact that he values morality above all else, not the details of his beliefs. That dogged perseverance has the capability of swallowing him whole.

FUNCTIONS. ↳ DUELING CLUB & THE BONES CLUB, both sought him out, and though resistance tasted sweet, a part of him was soft for it, the idea of being apart of something other than within the barracks of his family. There’s a feral part of him, hunger aching in his bones, and it’s sated, buzzed on a high, when he’s in the midst of dueling for the fucking hell of it (spells teasing, a flirtatious back and forth of fatal proportions, a dark curiosity licking its paws in the corner, waiting to pounce, and god, does it fill him) or scheming in the dark, four heads weaving together, morbid mischief and jest galore reigning in their souls. The day that a bewitched note appeared in every page of every book he touched, flirting with him to join a club of bones (stupid fucking name, was the first thing out of his mouth in that beginning meeting of his, some years ago now) and daring him to chase (something? anything? everything?) was the day that some fragile chip of him sealed its way back on.

003. WRITING + EXTRAS,

INTERNAL ⏤ CHARACTER ANALYSIS. ↳ Because I’m lacking in time (entirely my fault, yikes, I know), I’ve chosen to highlight three individual aspects (headcanons) of his character as a whole in an attempt to puzzle together a tangible picture of who he is, and through the evulsion of these facets, other details and factors of his persona will become present (or at least that’s what I’m angling for, fingers crossed). Essentially, these are the corners of his character that breathed something a little more divine than life into him, conjuring him in a different light and contorting that light into something blindingly magnificent. 

            RELIGION, something that struck me as i was writing some part of the application above is my constant use of the word god, spitting out in my writing with a vicious ease. this isn’t my own, natural, guttural utterance of the word, but rather the voice of james, spilling out like an unwelcome grease. it started out as a small rebellion, more to himself than anything else, for isn’t it always? ⏤ something to distract himself, purge himself, from the person he is. he’s not a complete idiot, you know; he knew of a god, several of them, upon which muggles called upon, prayed upon, ached upon. magic was his god; his father, his mother, his grandparents, all of his blood family and all their friends; the titans of the wizarding world boiled down to human form, glorified and shining beyond belief; they were gods, or at least, they were treated as such. merlin was the force above them all; and circe and nimue and the founders of hogwarts and everybody else deemed a little bit special. well, perhaps the muggles had something better, and so, he checked. a copy of the bible was snatched by his hands, and the pages were devoured. greek myths were no longer fantasies, but reality; after all, if magic could existed, why couldn’t they? he scoured for any and all gods, learning the way of the old world and diving into cultures and religions with a swimmer’s finesse. he stuck to the idea like an indulgent tar, clinging to the idea with no small desperation; perhaps if there was a god(s), as the muggles proclaimed and spat, then who he is was no mistake ⏤ he was meant to be the firstborn of harry potter, meant to carry the weight of ghosts on his back, meant to feel a crumpling in his bones, meant to burn with a love for his family and yet freeze over with most others. it was out of his hands, yes, finally, thank god. for nearly the first time in his fifteen years of life, he breathed with ease, unfiltered and soft and free. and then, short of a blissful month later, he fell. not unlike a fallen angel, nor unlike a star toppling from the sky, crashing and burnt and dust. there was no fate or destiny of god above, watching and waiting and pulling strings like a grand and demented puppeteer. now, he spits the words, sarcasm denting every syllable, even in earnest. 

            JEWELRY, ever since he can remember, he’s liked the glint of jewels. the way they encompass a color, almost swallowing you alongside with it. the intricacy is unfamiliar to his own fingers, and yet they still grasp to hold it. there’s no explanation or reason behind it all, transparent and easy to receive. a cut, blood red ruby adorns a gold chain on his chest, and a sister piece sits on his finger as a ring, both a gift from his mother. he loathe to take either off in any case, and often treasures them as closely as his wand. moreover, he’s not been known to reject a little smear of matching lipstick, though on occasion it’s been used as a paintbrush for some doodle on his cheeks rather than lined on his lips. he has no qualms with revealing that shard of himself, and the swarm of deep red on golden flesh is quite the sight to behold, anyway.

            GOTTA DO MORE, GOTTA BE MORE, not all characters have an original muse, but mine was definitely charlie dalton from dead poets society, as well as the more obvious character parallel of neil perry. james was written and created for this verse with neither in mind, and a great part of my entire outlook and analysis of him was already set in stone by the time i rewatched the film, but then, it just hit me. the specific mannerisms of charlie’s character are so apparent in james, from his facial expressions to the false bravado and desperation to seek something a little more in life and shatter himself in the process, and of course the advice that would strike james just as severely as it did charlie: “sucking the marrow out of life doesn’t mean chocking on the bone.” moreover, this entire scene perfectly encapsulates a part of james that simply cannot be said through words, which is why it works so well. the loyalty that charlie holds, gritty and strong and unparalleled, is one that lives on within james as well. and then there’s neil perry, who is the brightest light with a heart of gold, passion and soul simply dripping off him in excess, yet is shackled down by the weight of his parents, though not in the same way as james. a darkness feeds off of him, deep inside and caving him in, and that is so true to james’ character. there are plenty more parallels to go over, but those can be dissected at another time (an actual detail-by-detail parallel analysis has been in the works, i can say). 

(And because I haven’t said much else, I’ll just add in this snippet of his character that I wrote a little while ago in response to a question!) To me, James is a highly emotional character who nearly bursts from the zest that breathes within him, but can almost be accused of being a masochist because he so forcefully attempts to swallow that down and play the role of one unbothered by life in whole. He has a great respect and fierce loyalty toward his family, yet this is what so severely hurts him, for in the times that he can’t help but resent the expectations that so massively fall on him, it tears him up inside, which just creates and perpetrates a vicious cycle. The Burrow is one of his favorite places to be, for sure. He’s at a standstill in life where he has no idea what he’s bound to do once he leaves the life he’s known for seven years, desperate to both leave and stay. He isn’t committed to academics in any way (for now), but that doesn’t account for his caustic wit. He’s wonderfully complex and contradictory, but he’s also a massive sweetheart, and I can’t help but simply think of heat in relation to him. Like he’s just That Person that constantly has warm, almost hot, skin and you don’t know how in the dead of winter that’s possible. He’s definitely an anchor, and that’s where my decision of ballast originates from.

EXTERNAL ⏤ CONNECTIONS + POTENTIAL PLOTLINES. ↳ I’m going to wait on divulging on any specific skeleton character connections in mind for fear of inducing any bias, though here are some plotlines I’d like to uncover.

            Something that I’m very eager to explore is the contrast that James feels in relation to his family, and how that positively tears him up inside. It’s likened to a battle of the heart versus the mind: who he truly is and who he feels he can’t be, in fear of sacrificing his soul in the process. Essentially, I want to push him to the breaking point, shattering his senses into some mangled ball of shit that he must sort out. He’s in desperate need a breath of fresh air, and he’s been suffocating for years.  Moreover, he’s never really faced this mass of contradiction within him, always turning a blind eye and swallowing it down, scorching his throat in the process and nailing his heart right through the center. And when he must, all hell will break loose, and what can I look forward to, if not that?

            James is a golden light that may dim, but has never been blown out. Until now. I want to see him untethered and catastrophically scratched, the golden, youthful and scarlet blush of his flesh waned and stark against the image of who he is. What will cause this, lead to this, pioneer his destruction? Furthermore, he’s a seventh year as this school year starts, and that means his ass is out in less than a year, and he is absolutely unsure of what awaits him once he’s left these halls. I want to plant the seeds of possibility, and what may come of them. 

EXTRAS, EXTRAS. ↳ (Uh, I’m enlisting admin privilege?? Once game play begins, trust that there’s going to be loads of unnecessary edits flooding his account, but for right now, it’s a little bare.)

[blackgwenstacy]

‘tis the season (to be merry)

[shows up five days late with starbucks and a gay fanfic] hey y’all merry chrysler

Happy holidays to @connorstolll !! I was your secret santa for @pjosecretsanta2k17. I hope you enjoy your Solangelo college au <3

word count: 2,200

summary: Will Solace is a little in love with his roommate, and holiday party shenanigans only confirm that he’s a lot in love with his roommate.

warnings: alcohol use, a few f-bombs, and STEM major roasts

There’s a certain feeling one gets after taking their very last final of the semester. A freeing feeling, like the entire world has been lifted off their shoulders and each anxiety-ridden thought suddenly flees from their mind.

Will hasn’t felt this relieved since before the semester started. After those stressful weeks, he wants nothing more than to spend his break sleeping, eating, and binge watching Netflix.

And pining after his roommate. His dorky, adorable, oblivious ass roommate.

Will’s had somewhat of a crush on his college roommate, Nico di Angelo, for the past six months. They’ve roomed together for a year now, but it took some time for Will not to be intimidated by Nico’s dark features, brooding expression, and his infinite knowledge on the secrets of the universe.

Once Will had grown used to all of that, however, boy was he gone.

It’s not like Nico seemed to notice any difference in the way Will was acting toward him. It was quite ironic to Will, especially because Nico was the one who  loved to rip characters apart and analyze their every word and action. Watching any movie with Nico was one hell of a psychoanalysis.

Then again, Will could be a bit more. . . expressive about his affections. But it’s not like he was letting every opportunity to admit how he feels slip through his fingers, allowing himself to suffer in silence.

(That was exactly what he was doing.)

“Hey,” he calls out upon entering his dorm, stuffing his lanyard into his backpack and tossing it at the foot of his bed. As much as he’d like to sleep forever, he told Travis he would attend he and his brother’s party tonight, so he ought to get ready for that. 

“Hey,” Nico responds. He’s in bed, occupied with a rather thick looking book, an empty mug of coffee resting on the nightstand next to him. Will frowns, already knowing Nico was hardly going to pay him any attention, hyper focused on whatever literature he was studying. “How was the Physics exam?”

“Physiology. Anatomy and Physiology.”

“That’s not the same thing?”

“I’m just glad it’s over.” Will plops onto the stiff mattress of his dormitory bed, removing his boots and peeling off his socks. “I thought you were finished with assignments?”

Nico doesn’t look up from the book. “I am.”

“Then why are you reading—” Will gets up, crosses the short distance between their beds and bends over slightly to glance at the book cover, “—Canterbury Tales?”

Nico still doesn’t pay Will any mind, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses. Will struggles to ignore how adorable Nico looks with them on. “I’m taking English Lit next semester— ”

“Oh my god.”

“Did you know J.K. Rowling got inspiration for the Tale of the Three Brothers from the Pardoner’s Tale?”

Will did not know that, and actually thinks it’s pretty cool, but he’s still in disbelief of the fact that Nico was still studying, even after all of his finals.

“Aren’t you tired of reading?”

“Me, the English major, tired of reading? Preposterous.”

“Don’t you want to do something fun?”

Nico drops the heavy book in his lap, taking on a defensive tone. “I think literature is very fun, thank you.”

“Okay,” says Will, “and action potentials are as great as Disney World to me, but even I want nothing to do with them after talking all those exams.”

“You, the STEM major, want nothing to do with action potentials?”

Will chokes back his laugh. He want’s Nico to take him seriously, his sarcasm be damned.

“Take a break, man.” 

Nico frowns, taking off his glasses, and Will tries not to look disappointed.

“I don’t know,” Nico sighs. He crawls across his bed and shoves Canterbury Tales into his overflowing bookshelf kept at the foot of it. “It feels weird. Like, I keep thinking there’s something I should be doing.”

“What you should be doing,” Will starts, “is rewarding yourself for surviving Hell Week.” He drops the bomb. “The Stolls are having a holiday party tonight. You should come with me.“

Nico looks the opposite of intrigued. “No, thanks.”

“Come on, Nico,” Will stresses, “You haven’t left the residence hall in two weeks. You’ve only left this dorm room to take your finals.”

“I think having to evacuate last week because Leo started a fire in the communal kitchen counts as me leaving the residence hall.”

Will rolls his eyes. He knows Nico doesn’t have much of a party personality, but some of Nico’s friends would be there. It would be good to catch up with them and get some human interaction.

“It’ll be crowded, and noisy,” Nico objects. “Did you know noise is one of life’s most common stressors?”

Will hums, and quips, “So is loneliness.”

Nico glares at him. “You know, when I decided not to request a different roommate next semester, it’s because I thought there wasn’t any way you could possibly get more irritating.”

Will ignores the jab. “Are you sure it’s not because you love me?”

Nico amusedly raises one of his eyebrows.

“Fine,” Will relents. “I’ll go by myself. Alone. Even though loneliness is one of life’s most common stressors—“

“You are the biggest Drama Queen,” says Nico.

“Says you.“

Nico rolls his eyes, standing up. “Fine, I’ll go. But not for long, I’m already mentally exhausted.”

“Okay, cool,” Will says calmly, though on the inside he was dancing on flowers and rainbows. He gathers up his toiletries and his towel. “We’d better shower. It starts at seven.”

“You better not use my fucking stall, Solace, I swear to god.”

Will doesn’t know what he was expecting when Nico agreed to go to the Stoll’s party with him. Perhaps he thought Nico would spend the whole time sitting quietly, keeping to himself and counting the minutes until it would be over. Maybe he thought the festive atmosphere would warm Nico’s heart like his smile did to Will’s cheeks, and he would confess his love to Will after the two shared a cliche kiss under the mistletoe.

Whatever he was expecting, it definitely wasn’t this.

“And since we’ve no place to goooo, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” Nico sings, or slurs rather, along with Dean Martin’s suave voice. His face falls. “I can’t believe Jon Snow died.”

“He came back,” Will reminds him.

Nico’s face lights up, and so does Will’s heart. “Woah, you’re right.”

They sit next to each other on a raggedy green sofa in the Stoll’s apartment. There’s music playing in the background, the playlist going back and forth between traditional Christmas songs and whatever’s on the Hot 100 this week. There’s a few dozen people that are here, most of them Will knew by association. They’ve only been here an hour and Nico’s on his third cup of eggnog.

“I’ve been thinking,“ Nico starts, “when I was a kid they made us pick grass and put it in a box under the tree for the camels to eat on Three Kings Day and when I was a kid I didn’t question it but now I’m not a kid and camels don’t eat grass. Wait—do they?”

Will isn’t sure if he’s amused or concerned by how many conjunctions Nico just used in one sentence. Nico has a conniption every time Will uses a comma in an unnecessary place when they text.

“—They live in the desert. There’s no grass in the desert. Wait—is there?”

Nico doesn’t indulge in alcohol very often. Not that Will has ever seen, at least. He wonders if he usually sings Christmas carols and talks about camels when he’s drunk.

He watches as Nico scowls and peers curiously into his red cup. “I think there’s something in this eggnog.”

“Yes. Rum. I told you that before you drank it.”

Nico’s eyebrows raise, far enough for his bangs to hide them, blinks with wide eyes. “Oh shit.”

Then he shrugs, and downs the rest of the spiked drink. Unbelievable.

Will snorts. “You’re going to regret that.”

Nico grins mischievously. “Me, the college student with an existential crisis, having regrets?” he says, looking about the room. His eyebrows fly into his hair again. “Does Percy have samosas?”

Nico stumbles to his feet, and disregards Will as he chases down Percy for some of his samosas.

Well, at least Nico wasn’t miserable, Will thinks. He was enjoying himself, sort of. This could’ve been worse.

Will sits through a horribly rehearsed, yet hilariously iconic Mean Girl’s Jingle Bell Rock reenactment by Leo, Piper, Percy, and Jason, and a marshmallow eating contest between Cecil and Lou Ellen. It’s been twenty minutes and Nico still hasn’t returned. Will hopes he’s not throwing up eggnog and samosas in the bathroom right now.

He waits five more minutes before getting up to go look, passing a couple passionately making out under the mistletoe in the hallway. He checks the bathroom, which happens to be empty, and unwillingly checks the two bedrooms, which are not so empty. He hopes the Stolls change their sheets before they crash later.

Having no luck thus far, Will ventures into the kitchen. Maybe Nico’s judgement wasn’t totally impaired and he decided to find some water to flush his system. Or he was looking for more eggnog.

“Hey, Will,” a familiar voice says. Connor Stoll, sitting atop the kitchen island, grins down at him. He has a red solo cup in one hand, the other rests around the shoulders of his boyfriend, Mitchell. He raises his cup. “Eggnog?”

Will shakes his head. “I’m good.”

“DD?” Mitchell asks.

“Well, I guess so now.”

Mitchell raises a pierced eyebrow.

“I came with Nico. He’s kind of tipsy.”

“It’s Grandma Stoll’s famous holiday eggnog,” says Connor, raising his cup in praise. “Pure fuel.”

“Hey, have either of you seen him? I’ve been looking for him for half an hour—“

“Found him,” Mitchell smirks, pointing with his cup. Next to him Connor bursts out in rambunctious laughter.

“Oh, yeah, he’s feeling merry, all right!”

Will spins around, and — Oh. Oh.

Nico was dancing rather uncoordinatedly in the middle of the living room, surrounded by a dozen people, an Ariana Grande song blaring from the speakers. Everyone whoops as the dark-haired boy gyrates his hips on an offbeat.

Will lets out a bark of laughter, unbelieving of what he was witnessing.

“Strip tease!” a voice that sounds suspiciously like Leo yells.

Nico smirks at the suggestion, but doesn’t move to take off his clothing. That is, until, he catches Will’s eye in the crowd of people.

He sends Will a wink, and begins to pull off his sweater. Will can feel his stomach flip, his face heating up.

There are hoots and hollers, and people scramble to pull out their phones. It only seems to egg Nico on more. Will thinks there’s a bit too much liquid courage pumping through his veins.

He. . . should probably stop this. Nico would be mortified in the morning if Will let him give all their classmates a drunken strip-tease.

Nico’s stripping doesn’t advance very far, however, because his sweater promptly gets stuck over his head. Everyone roars with laughter, Nico’s giggles muffled by the knitted fabric.

Will grows anxious at all the phones recording tonight’s events. There was no way Nico wanted to be the center of everyone’s social media attention. He pushes his way through the crowd, grabbing at Nico. “O-kay!”

He pulls the drunken man away from the limelight, into a less crowded hallway.

Nico speaks from inside his sweater. “Will, is that you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m stuck.”

Will laughs fondly. “I see that. Here.”

Will helps Nico pull his sweater back down. Nico huffs and ruffles his hair, looking flustered.

“I think,” says Will, fixing Nico’s bird nest hair, “you’ve had too much eggnog.”

Nico hiccups in response.

“We should probably go back to the residence hall,” Will suggests, and Nico nods exaggeratedly in agreement.  His brown eyes catch on something above them.

“What?” Will asks, and follows Nico’s eyes. Oh.

A mistletoe, in all it’s holly jolly glory, hangs mockingly right above them.

Yeah, they’re not doing that.

“That’s so cliche,” Nico comments, squinting at the fake branch.

“I agree,” says Will. He grabs Nico by the shoulders, spins him around so he can guide him. “Let’s go.”

It took nearly an hour to get Nico back to their dorm. Will struggled with guiding the stumbling man all the way to his car, then had to drive slower than usual due to Nico’s complaints of motion sickness. And as much as he adored Nico, he would still kick his ass for throwing up eggnog and samosas inside of his car.

“Oh, you are going to hate me tomorrow,” Will says to Nico, tapping through the stories on his Snapchat feed. There were various clips of Nico’s clumsy performance tonight. Hysterical as it was, Will felt slightly embarrassed for him.

Nico looks over from where Will had tucked him into his bed. “Enough to change my roommate request?”

Will laughs at Nico for the hundredth time tonight. “I hope not.”

“It’s okay,” Nico yawns before continuing, “you’re a STEM major and I still haven’t requested a new roommate. You could be in league with the First Order and I still wouldn’t request a new roommate.”

Will snorts. He wasn’t sure how Nico could be intoxicated and still manage to be a fucking nerd.

Will puts his phone to sleep, setting it down on his nightstand. He turns in his bed to face Nico. “Why’s that?”

“You said it yourself,” says Nico. Will stares at him for a long time, not quite sure what he meant. Nico smiles at him, and turns in his bed. “Merry Christmas, Will.”

Christmas wasn’t for another week. Nonetheless, Will smiles fondly, and turns off his lamp. He lies down and indulges in the butterflies that warm his stomach. They match the fluttering of his heart.

“Merry Christmas, Nico.”

the Ariana Grande song Nico was dancing to was Wit It This Christmas LMAO

[hptrek314]

My OUAT Season 7B Theories

1) Drizella/Ivy is Regina’s daughter

For one, the girl looks JUST LIKE HER. Like dang, right down to the side braid in flashbacks/short dark hair and fire red lipstick with that devilish smirk. She literally parallels Regina in every way. She despises her “mother” Rapunzel/Victoria enough to seek out magic to get away from her just like how Regina was with Cora. Rapunzel/Victoria resents her and prefers Anastasia for some unknown reason the writers haven’t explained yet. Victoria has yet to show any sign of magical abilities, whereas Drizella is just as powerful as Regina despite having hardly any training, so she ought to come from a powerful magical family. Also the show keeps dropping hints, like Rumple referring to Drizella as “Princess” and Rapunzel not embracing Drizella when she returned home in 7x09. 7x10 was the biggest indicator for me when Victoria used “blood magic” to turn Drizella to stone. Eight years later when Gothel turned her back human Regina was shocked beyond belief and even said “That’s impossible! Blood magic can’t be reversed”, thus proving Bictoria likely didn’t use blood magic! Also later in the episode during the battle Regina asked Drizella if she was still having “mommy issues”. I’m not sure why nobody’s talking about this but the odds are stacking up in favor of this mother/daughter connection. My questions are: How is she hers? Did Victoria kidnap her? Victoria must know, that’s why she hates her, so why did she raise her? Does Drizella know? Does Rumple know? Is she possibly Wish!Regina/Robin’s child? If she’s Robin’s daughter, does that make her and Robin Jr sisters AND 1st cousins? How is this going to play into this already extremely complex season? I NEEED to know!

2) The White Elephant Sent Hook on a Wild Goose Chase

So, at the last minute, Hook gave Cinderella the elephant that would ensure Hook had his daughter Alice as his daughter under the new curse. In HH, Hook believes his daughter to be Eloise Gardner, and has a journal of hers with the symbol of the Coven of Eight in it. WHAT IF in the Land Without Magic, Eloise Gardner is Robyn’s alias. That would explain why she knew the Coven of Eight symbol, because she heard her mom and aunt talking about it in 7x10. This would mean he thinks Kelly/Zelena is his ex, which would be completely hilarious. Hook can’t find her yet because something happened when Robyn worked for Regina that made her decide to leave, which caused Zelena and Hook to split, Zelena moving to San Francisco and Hook becoming a cop to try and find Robin/Eloise. He remembers playing chess with her because Robyn and Alice likely played together, and under the curse he’s befriended Alice because she reminds him of his daughter *wink wink*.

3) My Coven of Eight Theory

Here’s who I think will be in the Coven of Eight:

1) Gothel (confirmed, also I’m 80% sure she’s Mother Willow in Pocahontas because she’s referred to as mother AND the witch in Brave)

2) Anastasia OR Drizella (If Drizella takes back her powers, and she’s a badass from a line of powerful witches (see Theory 1), so I expect nothing less)

3) Regina

4) Zelena

5) Robyn (daughter of Zelena AND a hella good archer, definitely)

6) Alice (daughter of Gothel, again from a powerful line of witches)

7) Tiana OR Cinderella (I’m hoping for Tiana because of all the magic in Princess and the Frog, maybe we’d see more Louisiana bayou culture and some of the cool magical medicinal practices, also Tiana’s a badass whereas Cinderella’s a whiny pansyass that annoys me to no end)

8) Tiger Lily/Pocahontas (Slightly OOC, but after that brief cameo in 7x10 I could easily see Native American magic being brought in to the story, that’d be really cool!)

Here’s who I think WAS in the Coven of Eight:

1) Cora

2) Ursula

3) Maleficent

4) Snow Queen

5) Gothel

6) Cruella DeVil

7) Lady Tremaine?

8) Evil Queen? (Could he Wish!Timeline, or honestly it wouldn’t be a stretch to say Regina was in it but isn’t telling, it’d finally explain why Ursula, Maleficent and Cruella all equally hated her, she may have been the reason the Coven was destroyed in the beginning, especially if it’s when she was creating the Dark Curse and was looking for help)

I will say I feel like it’s passing on the baton from the old, classic female villains to the newer ones, which I’m pretty hype about.

4) Robyn and Alice

This isn’t a theory, just a short note to say I personally love this pairing for all of the two scenes we’ve seen of Robyn. I appreciated the genuineness of how Robyn felt uncomfortable and awkward when her mom was gossiping with her aunt Regina in front of her about how she was experiencing “young love”, and really felt Robyn’s awkwardness accurately portrayed the love Robyn has for Alice. Robyn’s the character that would do anything for Alice, and the love and happiness they had for one another in that one scene they had together had me gushing so hard my fairytale/history obsessed gay heart could hardly take it, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this couple ends up!

Overall though, I really like this season and wish people would give it a chance. Yes, it’s EXTREMELY confusing, the time jumps and lack of ageing is driving me insane, and I think Cinderella’s the most whiny/stereotypical damsel in distress/non-badass woman in the entire 7 seasons of the series and makes me cringe because she doesn’t fit the epic feminist themes of the show. That being said, the rest of this season has been phenomenal. Regina and Rumple are fire, I’ve never been so excited for two characters. I was never really a Hook fan until now, and I really think they’ve made his character more likable. I like how with the new realm, ANY character can be brought back and able to cross any racial/cultural/gender/age lines. Suddenly daring thieves like Robin Hood can be a badass girl who happens to like other badass girls, or POC are able to be represented through stereotypical white fairy tale figures. This show likely won’t last till season 8, and it’s really a shame, because I think it’s really doing a great job of bringing in social commentary, and I look forward to seeing where the writers decide to go next!

[ciaranlawrenceaub]

Edited Transcript Final

Editied Transcript - from 2800 to 1800 words

I had a tough time cutting this transcript down 1000 words. I didn't want to take away any of the important information and didn't want to take away from the message that he was trying to give. I found a middle ground and cut out most of the stuff that I believed wouldn't be so important to communicate across.

Strap yourselves in, we're going to Mars.

Not just a few astronauts -- thousands of people are going to colonize Mars. Some of you will end up working on projects on Mars, and I guarantee that some of your children will end up living there.

That probably sounds preposterous, so I'm going to share with you how and when that will happen. But first I want to discuss the obvious question: Why the hell should we do this?

We are incredibly vulnerable to the whims of our own galaxy. A single, large asteroid could take us out forever. To survive we have to reach beyond the home planet. Think what a tragedy it would be if all that humans have accomplished were suddenly obliterated.

Exploration is in our DNA. Two million years ago humans evolved in Africa and then slowly but surely spread out across the entire planet by reaching into the wilderness that was beyond their horizons. This stuff is inside us. Some of the greatest advances in civilization and technology came because we explored.

Think for a moment, what we had when John F. Kennedy told us we would put a human on the moon. He excited an entire generation to dream. Think how inspired we will be to see a landing on Mars. Perhaps then we will look back at Earth and see that that is one people instead of many and perhaps then we will look back at Earth, as we struggle to survive on Mars, and realize how precious the home planet is.

Mars is not our sister planet. It's far less than half the size of the Earth, however the surface area of Mars that you can stand on is equivalent to the surface area of the Earth that you can stand on, because the Earth is mostly covered by water. The atmosphere on Mars is really thin, 100 times thinner, than on Earth and it's not breathable, it's 96 percent carbon dioxide. The average temperature is minus 81 degrees, although there is quite a range of temperature. A day on Mars is about as long as a day on Earth, plus about 39 minutes. Seasons and years on Mars are twice as long as they are on Earth. Mars has a lot less gravity than on Earth.

Now, as you can see, Mars isn't exactly Earth-like, but it's by far the most livable other place in our entire solar system.

Meanwhile, our track record of getting to Mars is lousy. We and the Russians, the Europeans, the Japanese, the Chinese and the Indians, have actually sent 44 rockets there, and the vast majority of them have either missed or crashed. Only about a third of the missions to Mars have been successful.

And we don't at the moment have a rocket big enough to get there anyway. We once had that rocket, the Saturn V. It was the most magnificent machine ever built by humans, and it was the rocket that took us to the Moon. But the last Saturn V was used in 1973 to launch the Skylab space station. The biggest rocket we have now is only half big enough to get us anything to Mars.

How soon will the first humans actually land here?

These days, NASA seems to be saying that it can get humans to Mars by 2040. Maybe they can. I believe that they can get human beings into Mars orbit by 2035. But frankly, I don't think they're going to bother in 2035 to send a rocket to Mars, because we will already be there.

We're going to land on Mars in 2027. And the reason is this man is determined to make that happen. His name is Elon Musk, he's the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Now, he actually said that we would land on Mars by 2025, but Elon Musk is very optimistic, but you've got to ask yourself, can this guy really do this by 2025 or 2027? SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, lifted six tons of supplies to the International Space Station. 10 years ago, SpaceX had not launched anything, or fired a rocket to anywhere. The person who created an entire rocket company in less than 10 years will get us to Mars by 2027.

Private companies are leaping into space and they will be happy to take you to Mars.

NASA may not be able to get us there until 2040, or we may get there a long time before NASA, but NASA has taken a huge responsibility in figuring out how we can live on Mars.

Here's what you need to live on Earth: food, water, shelter and clothing. To live on Mars you need all of the above, plus oxygen.

So let's look at the most important thing on this list first. Water is the basis of all life as we know it, and it's far too heavy for us to carry water from the Earth to Mars to live, so we have to find water if our life is going to succeed on Mars. And if you look at Mars, it looks really dry, it looks like the entire planet is a desert. But it turns out that it's not. The soil alone on Mars contains up to 60 percent water. And a number of orbiters that we still have flying around Mars have shown us that lots of craters on Mars have a sheet of water ice in them.

Orbiters tell us that there are huge amounts of underground water on Mars as well as glaciers. If only the water ice at the poles on Mars melted, most of the planet would be under 30 feet of water. So there's plenty of water there, but most of it's ice and underground.,/p>

WAVER is a device cooked up at the University of Washington back in 1998. It's basically a low-tech dehumidifier. And it turns out the Mars atmosphere is often 100 percent humid. So this device can extract all the water that humans will need simply from the atmosphere on Mars.

Next we have to worry about what we will breathe. Michael Hech has developed Moxie. It's a reverse fuel cell, essentially, that sucks in the Martian atmosphere and pumps out oxygen. And you have to remember that CO2, which is 96 percent of Mars' atmosphere, CO2 is basically 78 percent oxygen.

The next big rover that NASA sends to Mars in 2020 is going to have one of these devices aboard, and it will be able to produce enough oxygen to keep one person alive indefinitely. But the secret to this is that this thing was designed from the get-go to be scalable by a factor of 100.

What will we eat?

We'll use hydroponics to grow food, but we're not going to be able to grow more than 15 to 20 percent of our food there, at least not until water is running on the surface of Mars and have the capability of planting crops. In the meantime, most of our food will arrive from Earth, and it will be dried.

And then we need some shelter. At first we can use inflatable, pressurized buildings as well as the landers themselves. But this really only works during the daytime. There is too much solar radiation and too much radiation from cosmic rays.

Now, it turns out that the soil on Mars, by and large, is perfect for making bricks. And NASA has figured this one out, too. They're going to throw some polymer plastic into the bricks, shove them in a microwave oven, and then you will be able to build buildings with really thick walls. Or we may choose to live underground in caves or in lava tubes, of which there are plenty.

Clothing

On Earth we have miles of atmosphere piled up on us, which creates 15 pounds of pressure on our bodies at all times, and we're constantly pushing out against that. On Mars there's hardly any atmospheric pressure. So Dava Newman, a scientist at MIT, has created a sleek space suit. It will keep us together, block radiation and keep us warm.

So that leads to the next big really big step in living the good life on Mars. And that's terraforming the planet: making it more like Earth, reengineering an entire planet.

First we've got to warm it up. Mars is incredibly cold because it has a very thin atmosphere. The answer lies here, at the south pole and at the north pole of Mars, both of which are covered with an incredible amount of frozen carbon dioxide -- dry ice. If we heat it up, it sublimes directly into the atmosphere and thickens the atmosphere the same way it does on Earth.

And as we know, CO2 is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas. A way of doing this is to erect a very large solar sail and focus it, it essentially serves as a mirror, and focus it on the south pole of Mars at first. As the planet spins, it will heat up all that dry ice, sublime it, and it will go into the atmosphere. It actually won't take long for the temperature on Mars to start rising, probably less than 20 years.

What we're shooting for is a runaway greenhouse effect: enough temperature rise to see a lot of that ice on Mars, especially the ice in the ground, melt.

As the atmosphere gets thicker, everything gets better. We get more protection from radiation, more atmosphere makes us warmer, makes the planet warmer, so we get running water and that makes crops possible. Then more water vapor goes into the air, forming yet another potent greenhouse gas. It will rain and it will snow on Mars.

We'll still be left with the complicated problem of making the atmosphere breathable, and frankly that could take 1,000 years to accomplish. But humans are amazingly smart and incredibly adaptable.

There is no telling what our future technology will be able to accomplish and no telling what we can do with our own bodies. In biology right now, we are on the very verge of being able to control our own genetics, what the genes in our own bodies are doing,and certainly, eventually, our own evolution. We could end up with a species of human being on Earth that is slightly different from the species of human beings on Mars.

It will be the most disruptive event in our lifetimes, and I think it will be the most inspiring.

Children who are now in elementary school are going to choose to live there.

Remember when we landed humans on the Moon? When that happened, people looked at each other and said, "If we can do this, we can do anything." What are they going to think when we actually form a colony on Mars?

Most importantly, it will make us a spacefaring species. And that means humans will survive no matter what happens on Earth. We will never be the last of our kind.

[rememberthattime]

Chapter 51. The Move III. Home

What a month. December 2019 started in Sydney, but in just four weeks, took me through New York (Chels was in Hawaii), Dallas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Seattle, and finally London.

Somehow this was our LEAST busy holiday over the past three years, but it flew by nonetheless.

The month began with an international move... obviously challenging, and further complicated by EY’s mobility team. Movers, cleaners, and interested Gumtree buyers cycled through the house, while Chelsay and I balanced enjoying our final days in Manly with UK visa applications.

Eventually our Aussie apartment was empty. Just four massive bags remained - they held our only belongings until our shipment arrives in London sometime in April. Those four bags would be heading in opposite directions for the next 10 days though: Chelsay’s followed her to Hawaii, while mine were heading to New York.

I’m extremely jealous of Chelsay’s trip to the North Shore. Not only did she get to hang with Sumner, Chris, Miles, and Orly, but she enjoyed a few post-Sydney surfs, Island vibes, and beautiful weather.

Meanwhile, I had intense work meetings in New York, which required staying an extra few days for the biggest presentation I’ve given to-date. I was at least able to stroll around Manhattan between meetings, with highlights including Gramercy Park, East Village, Greenwich Village, and snow in Times Square.

Our Christmas Break really began once Chelsay and I finally made it to Dallas, though we were only home for one day before embarking on a family road trip.

Chelsay and I have traveled to around 50 countries, yet there are so many places we haven’t explored in our own backyard, including the Deep South. With plenty of time in the US this December, we decided to take a short road trip through Louisiana and Mississippi with Jeff, Liv, Matt, and Emily.

Some highlights:

A foggy visit to Evergreen Plantation. Although the plantation was a primary filming site for fictional Django Unchained, its slave past was very real. Despite our tour guide’s best efforts to portray a “different narrative”, the slaves’ conditions were pretty clear... “Remember: snakes, gators, mosquitoes, yellow fever.”

Jambalaya, Beignets, and Hurricanes in New Orleans’ French Quarter, paired with our over-the-top Southern accents (“There’s been a muwduh!”)

Strolling Barataria Preserve, a swampy bayou coated in Spanish moss... but with zero bathrooms along the trail. What happened in the bayou stays in the bayou. 

Touring antebellum homes in charming Natchez, though the biggest highlight was Jeff trying to understand how their 1980′s occupants got cable. 

Friendly and entertaining strangers throughout the entire trip. Zippy the gas station attendant (“Energy drink, for the guy that’s gotta push the car”), our Uber driver Mahogany (“Reroute me”), the Mississippi McDonalds cashier (“Y’all wan’ dat wit pe-can sauce!?”), and a New Orleans man training his pet raccoon.

The road trip was great siblings trip - no doubt one that we’ll laugh about for a long time. But after covering Sydney, New York, Louisiana, and Mississippi in just two weeks, it was time to settle down for a bit.

Luckily we had almost a month to relax: 23 days before our one-way flight to London, split between Dallas and Seattle. I hardly worked and Chelsay was already well into sabbatical-mode, which meant we had zero responsibility while home... It was a return to childhood.

Some highlights:

These aren’t in any order, except for this first one: Matt’s quizzes. It’s become a Kern tradition that Matt puts together ~15 ten question quizzes. They’re all creative categories, with our annual favorite being “Synonym song title & band”. Matt’s past four annual quizzes were all excellent, but this Christmas’ installment, Kern Family Quizzes 5: The Moscow Incident, was by far the most impressive. It included an audio/visual component, and categories ranging from “Name this platinum song being played on recorder” and “Name the two actors’ whose faces I’ve merged into one”. Matt could make millions if he sold these games.

Speaking of games, the Kern’s and Wright’s combined to complete four escape rooms. Perfect 4/4. Grandma Helen calls them “Crazy rooms”, which is absolutely understandable after a T-Rex roared at us for 20 minutes in one of our Seattle escape rooms.

Continuing in the friendly competition category, the Kern’s love bocce... especially bocce with a wrinkle: wild bocc’ (aka free-range bocce). Most bocce is played in a walled rectangular arena. Not for the Kern’s though. We drive to the Trophy Club Park and set up our “course” through trees, along hills, across sidewalks, and between the small children panicking as we hurl 3 lb balls towards them. Like a windmill in putt-putt, these obstacles make the game more challenging, especially the scared children. Plus we all just like getting outside.

One last friendly competition: giant jenga at Jeff & Liv’s new house. Their “starter” home is so big that they have an entire room for giant jenga... and we needed the space. This genuinely could’ve been a Guinness record for longest game. For at least an hour -- every single turn -- we were sure the tower JUST HAD to fall.

The next four bullets are all cowboy related. Chelsay and I have been together for 10 years, and every time we go to Dallas, she insists on visiting a dude ranch. We’ve never had enough time... until this Christmas. Chelsay finally got her wish when we drove an hour outside Fort Worth to Beaumont Ranch. This day trip could’ve had its own post, but I’ll have to summarize in a few short stories.

First, the main event was a cattle drive on horseback. Our instructor, a true Texan cowgirl, led us into the 800-acre plains in search of rogue longhorns. Chelsay was the first to come across wayward cattle and, despite her metropolitan upbringing, instinctively started yelling in an extremely southern accent: “Go on, git! Heeyah!” Our Texan instructor had to be insulted.

Second story: Matt is very good at lassoing. I was not. This video pretty much tells the story.

Last story from our cowboy day. The ranch had its own replica western town, so Chelsay had the idea to make a “duel” video. We talked about the dialogue for under 10 seconds, but the result was pure gold. Oscar worthy (at least better than The Irishman). You might think that we added the music afterwards to sync with our actions... Nope, that was just my mom holding her phone close to Chelsay’s camera. That should at least be up for Best Sound Editing.

My parents, Chelsay, and I fell into a nightly routine of Dark from Netflix Germany. Phenomenal show, despite watching an English-dubbed version. We finished two seasons in under 10 days.

Obviously we hit all the favorite food spots, led by Feedstore, Mi Cocina, Anamias, Christinas, Costa Vida. We also added a new favorite: HG Supply and their tasty impossible whopper bowl with quinoa and chili. 

On the topic of food, I must have eaten 100 cookies while home. We had the traditional Kern Christmas cookie bake-off (A+ humor, but C+ presentation), but Chelsay also picked up a baking addiction. It was 11 pm and we’d all be heading to bed, but Chelsay was still laser focused and meticulously decorating her cookies. Her efforts showed though: A+ flavor, and A+++ presentation. 

Next up was our return to Seattle. On Chelsay and I’s first full day, we decided to go on a long hike. We actually didn’t hike much when lived in Seattle, which we now realize was dumb. I definitely took the Northwest’s landscape for granted — every time we visit, I’m blown away by the sky-scraping evergreens, fresh scent, crisp air, and looming mountain ranges that surround the city. Anyway, we’ve been trying to catch up on our hiking whenever we visit, and the closest trail to the Wright’s house is Mt. Si, a semi-challenging 8-mile hike. It’s the medium-well steak of hikes. Danny, Chelsay, and I endured a sweaty couple hours -- just to give you an idea of the hike’s height, the peak was snow-capped, but the views made the steep ascent worthwhile. 

On the same ‘missed PNW opportunities’ line: when I lived in Seattle, I ever took advantage of the many nearby mountain villages, especially the Bavarian-themed Leavenworth. Tucked in the Cascade Mountains, you would never believe Leavenworth is just two hours from bustling Pike Place. Gothic-lettered storefronts line the half-timbered town’s main street: Munchen Haus, the Sausage Garten, Ludwig’s, and Starbucks (it’s still America after all). Danny, June, Chelsay, and I enjoyed a quiet walk on Blackbird Island, threw snowballs for target practice, and warmed up with hot cider and big (BIG) game of Uno. We also built up our shaka inventory with our Leavenworth friends Alex & Charlie.

It's also worth mentioning that I went to a Hawks game with Hanan. It was a rivalry game and the stakes couldn't be higher: SEA vs SF. Sunday Night Football. Last game of the 2019 regular season, and the winner took the NFC West. The 49ers went up 16-0, but the Hawks stormed back and had the ball with a chance to win on the last play. Russell Wilson hit Jacob Hollister close to the goal line, but a 49er tackled him quickly. Hollister reached for the goal line as he fell, but came up an inch short of a game-winning touchdown. Even though the Hawks lost, it was still a great time.

Speaking of great times, we hosted New Year’s Eve at the Wright’s house in Woodinville. What an incredible night. Midnight seems to get later and later every year, but Chelsay and I stayed up until 3 am catching up with Devon & Babs, Martiin @ Michelle, and Austin & Kels. Danny, June, and Chels were such amazing hosts - I kept telling them my friends didn’t deserve their hospitality.

We may have been in the US for five weeks, but it felt like only five days. Although it fly by, these stories and pictures are proof that our time was well spent. 

And even though we were boarding a one-way flight to London for the next few years, there’s no question where our true home will always be.