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college-girl199328 · 2 years ago

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Climate change is forcing wildlife to move north — and they're bringing diseases with them

COVID-19 has shown us how quickly a new disease can spread, upending our lives. Even if it does not occur in our lifetimes, research suggests that a disease transmitted from animals to humans exists.

The risk of diseases being passed from animals to humans is relatively low, but not zero. Based on current trends, some scientists predict that this number will triple over the next several decades as humans and animals interact more.

Invasive species that enter a new habitat and outcompete native wildlife may also bring new diseases, which can be devastating. With native and invasive species often having no choice but to move through densely populated areas when searching for new habitats, there is a higher risk of those diseases being passed from animals to humans.

This is known as zoonosis. Zoonosis events can lead to outbreaks of novel diseases, such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Scientists have estimated that over 10,000 viruses with the potential to infect humans are currently residing in animal hosts, and that doesn't include bacteria or other pathogens.

A recent paper published in the journal Nature shows climate change is increasing the risk of those viruses crossing the species barrier and infecting humans.

In other cases, known carriers of existing human diseases move into new areas, increasing the risk of transmission. Here in Canada, many native and invasive species can host and transmit diseases, which is one of the many reasons scientists are wary of species expanding into new areas.

Enter the black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis found across the eastern provinces, and its cousin, the western black-legged tick, Ixodes pacificus, on the Pacific Coast.

Though unlikely to cause a pandemic, they are the only known carriers of Borrelia burgdorferi, the pathogen that causes Lyme disease, which has been on the rise in Canada over the last decade.

They can carry a variety of other pathogens as well. Blacklegged ticks, also known as deer ticks, were once a rare sight across Canada. They are now found in large areas of Ontario and elsewhere more frequently than ever during the year.

Catherine Bouchard, a veterinary epidemiologist with the Public Health Agency of Canada and adjunct professor at the University of Montreal, has seen this firsthand.

I used to find 1,000 ticks in two years if I sampled more than six months per year. Nowadays, when we go out in the same region, we have 1,000 ticks. This is the same trend seen across much of Canada, including Ontario, and Bouchard said it is expected to continue.

This has also led to cases of Lyme disease, which can start as a rash, headache, fever, and chills and develop into more serious issues like arthritis, long-lasting fatigue, and neurological and cardiac problems.

To transmit Lyme disease, a tick must remain attached for at least 24 hours, with the chance of transmission increasing significantly the longer it feeds, said Bouchard.

She added that although only about 20 percent of ticks carry the disease-causing bacteria on average, it can be as high as 50 percent in some areas. These ticks are one of many species undergoing a range shift, moving north because of climate change.

The weather we are experiencing is changing climate change drivers such as temperature and precipitation, and this, of course, has a direct impact on vector ticks.

A range shift occurs when species are forced to move out of their typical homes and into new areas that can support them. You can see an example of that in Ontario, where blacklegged tick populations have spread since 2016.

Every species has a niche, a specific set of environmental constraints that must be met for survival and reproduction. These include temperature, humidity, precipitation, and the presence or absence of certain other species.

Climate change has affected these factors in habitats around the world. As a result, many species' niches are less common or no longer exist within their historical range.

Because of climate change, the conditions are changing throughout the range of all the species, and the region where they are most abundant is shifting. [Species] say it is too hot, too dry, or too humid for them, so they have to move.

Movement can be unpredictable, but generally, species tend to head toward cooler climates: toward the poles, to higher elevations, or, in the case of aquatic species, to lower depths.

These range shifts pose many challenges for individual species, ecosystems, and human communities. For some species, like caribou or migratory birds, movement is a natural part of their lives.

They are used to moving through large regions. But other species can't move that fast, can they? So they need to slowly acquire some new habitat along the way.

These discrepancies between species' abilities to move to new habitats can make range shifts difficult for those that can move with relative ease. Not only do species need climate, but they also need their resources, food, and other members of their species to survive.

New areas also mean new competition with new species, including humans. Species from southern Ontario that are at the northern range of their range in North America and are moving north are faced with an agricultural landscape and habitats to colonize.

They are competing with humans for the best habitat that they can use. Even when trying to return the land to its natural state by rehabilitating areas with native species, climate change is a big part of the conversation.

That's why more northern species, like hemlock trees, may not be part of planting efforts at the RBG in the future, even though they're native to the area.

We're more interested in those slightly more southern plants as part of site restoration projects. And at the same time, you're looking at what will march north into this area and be the foundation of the future forest?

For many species, the term range shift is a misnomer. Species at risk often face what is better described as a range contraction, where their southern range border moves faster than the northern one, causing their range to shrink.

This is also common for species that live on mountains. As the climate warms, their range shifts to a higher elevation as they ascend. Indeed, invasive species, like black-legged ticks, often enjoy range expansion due to climate change as they gain more suitable habitats than they lose.

For many protected areas, the removal of invasive species is a top priority. Climate change is threatening to make that even more difficult. In the winter, the cold usually keep invasive species at bay. If the climate doesn't change, what limits your survival in the winter is no longer your survival, and you start to move in.

The impacts that we worry about more than anything are the Eurasian insects, bacteria, or plants that have made it to North America and are invasive species but are held at bay by the fact that it gets too cold here in the winter.

It's definitely a thing we're watching, and everybody's watching. Work is underway through research networks to track and monitor these shifts. By having these big networks of research and trying to track these emerging diseases, I think that's how we have a chance—just by doing that collective work and effort with all these different partners.

Disease emergence and pandemic vigilance have become a key focus of many jurisdictions in the wake of COVID-19, with the public, scientists, and policymakers recognizing the dangers of being caught unaware.

As for those working on the ground to help species affected by range shifts, it really comes down to helping nature do its thing. One of the best ways to do this is to provide corridors or stepping stones of natural habitat so species can move across human-dominated landscapes to new habitats.

Parks Canada has taken the initiative to create some corridors throughout the country. But it's a work in progress. When restoring these areas, diversity is consequential.

Rebuilding ecosystems is about building resilience. The greater diversity you can have, the better.

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verai-marcel · 3 years ago

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Serendipitous Meetings (Arthur x GN!Reader, Modern AU, 18+)

Summary: You foolishly didn’t mark where you parked in the huge parking structure, and spend some time looking for your car. You run into a fellow who did the same thing, and things get ridiculously serendipitous from there.

Author’s Notes: How many tropes can I shove into this fic? Let’s face it, I just wanted to have Arthur fuck like the manly man that he is. Also going for gender neutral as much as possible, so all my readers who want a piece of Arthur can have him.

Tags: Arthur x GN!Reader, smut, light D/s tones, size kink, light spanking, neck grabbing, rough sex, dirty talk, modern AU

AO3 Link is here, li’l darlin’.

Word Count: 3764

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"Shit."

You let out a long suffering sigh as you looked around the packed parking structure. In your rush to meet your friends, you had forgotten to take a photo of where you parked. Now you stared at the large expanse of cars, racking your brain for at least a slight memory of how you got to the venue entrance from your car.

Sticking your hand into your pocket, you gripped your phone for a moment before letting it go. You had already shooed your friends away, insisting you had parked nearby and could get to your spot no problem. Swallowing your pride, you started to search the rows for the off-white bucket of bolts you dared to call your car.

After searching one floor, you trudged up the stairs to the next one, stopping a few steps past the landing to gaze upon the hundreds of cars before you. You faintly heard another set of steps coming down the stairwell, but you were so mired in your own despair that you didn't pay the sound any mind.

"Shit," said a gravelly voice next to you.

Glancing over, a very broad set of shoulders filled your view. Your eyes flicked over the red and black flannel shirt and blue jeans, with an almost hilariously large belt buckle. Then you looked up.

Oh no. He was gorgeous, in a rugged, manly-man sort of way. That chiseled jaw, the five o’clock shadow, that thick neck… he was the kind of man who could probably pick you up and throw you over his shoulder with ease. You were so busy staring at him in tired awe that he finally noticed you.

A pair of turquoise eyes met yours. "Sorry," the man said. "Can't find my truck."

It took you half a second to remember to respond. Then you gave him an empathic half-grin. "I can't find my car either."

He pointed upstairs. "What's yer car look like? Maybe I saw it up there."

You shook your head. "It's just a generic off-white Toyota Corolla."

The man shrugged. "Oh. Well, sorry darlin', there's a bunch of those up there."

You sighed, lamenting the fact that your car was one of the most popular cars out on the road these days. You also secretly enjoyed him calling you darling with that accent of his. He sounded like he had just stepped out of a spaghetti western.

"Maybe I saw your truck downstairs, if it stands out," you said, trying to be helpful.

"It's a blue Chevy pick-up. Really old, like one o' them classic trucks, 'cept it ain't been cleaned up like the ones you see in a car show."

Your memory flashed with the image of a dirty blue truck in your apartment complex's garage. You stifled a laugh at the thought. You had always wondered who drove the old thing, since you had never seen its owner.

"Nope, I didn't see a truck like that downstairs," you told him.

"Oh. Well, guess we better start lookin'," he said. He looked at you for a moment, opened his mouth, then closed it again.

You waited.

“Maybe,” he finally said, “maybe we could look together? For a bit. Keep each other company.”

“Okay,” you said easily. Part of your brain screamed that it could be really easy for him to just pull you into his car, but you dismissed the voice in your head. He seemed alright; you had a good feeling about this guy.

The two of you took off towards the left side of the structure. Putting your remote under your chin and hoping it would actually increase its range, you hit the button on occasion.

“Uh, what’re you doin’?” he asked, pointing at your remote.

“Oh, I read about this online, someone figured out that you can use your own head as an antenna, or something like that.”

The man raised an eyebrow, but eventually just nodded. “Huh, I guess that makes sense.”

You shrugged. “Haven’t tested it before this, so I’m hoping it actually works.”

The two of you wandered further and further towards the center when finally you heard that familiar beep.

*BEEP BEEP*

He chuckled. “Guess it works.”

You had never been so happy to hear that annoying little buzzer of a horn. You took off at a jog without waiting for the man, going towards where you had heard the sound, and as you turned a corner, you spotted it.

It was the big, old, blue truck from your apartment complex.

No way, you thought. There is no way. Maybe it's a similar truck.

Going back, you saw the man wandering around, still searching.

"Hey Mister!" you yelled.

He turned towards you.

You excitedly pointed towards the truck. "This yours?"

He started walking to you, and as he came closer, you could see the smile on his face and felt your heart skip a beat.

"Thank you," he said, stopping in front of you. "Where’s your car?"

You grinned and hit your unlock button. The little off-white sedan next to his truck let out a little beep, the lights coming on.

"Wish I had one of those," he said wistfully. "Sure woulda made my life easier." He looked at you with a small smirk as he opened the door to his truck. "But then I wouldn’t have met you. Thanks fer your help, angel."

You smiled, feeling your cheeks warm from his comment. "No problem." You struggled to find anything else to say, feeling pathetically desperate to hear him speak more. "Have a good night," you finally said.

"You too," he said, his voice a little lower, a little more breathy as he hauled himself into his truck and closed the door. Now that you had a pretty good feeling that he was a decent guy and not a creep, you half-wished he really would pull you into his truck and have his way with you.

Shaking the lewd thought from your head, you got into your car and set up your phone to listen to a podcast as you drove home. You eased your way out of the garage, through the local roads, and onto the freeway. For the next thirty minutes, you would spot the same blue truck out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes you’d pass him, sometimes he’d pass you.

Maybe it’s a different blue truck, you tried to convince yourself.

You couldn’t convince yourself any further when you pulled into your apartment complex right behind him. He parked at his usual spot, three away from yours. Climbing out of your car, you saw him walk towards you.

“You followin’ me?” he asked gruffly, though the grin on his face clearly showed his amusement at the coincidence.

“I can’t believe we live in the same complex,” you muttered, still in shock that you had never seen this handsome man before. “How long have you lived here?”

“Oh, ‘bout two years now.”

“Shit,” you thought to yourself.

“Why’re you cursin’?”

Oh crap. You said that out loud. “I, uh, um,” you stammered.

He quietly watched you, letting you stew in your own embarrassment, an amused grin on his face. The bastard was enjoying watching you squirm!

Feeling your face heat up, you blurted out the truth.

“We could’ve known each other sooner!”

It was an unfortunate tick in your personality that you had never managed to get rid of, and now, watching his eyes widen at your embarrassing remark, you wished the sidewalk would just open up and swallow you whole. But since that wasn’t going to happen, you opted to turn around and stalk away.

“Hey now, wait, you can’t just say that and leave,” the man said, jogging to catch up to you. When you wouldn’t stop walking, he swerved in front of you, forcing you to stop mere millimeters from him. You noticed how big he was, how little you were in comparison. You weren’t a small person by any means, he was just… large.

“Why’re you runnin’ away, darlin’?” he asked, his voice hushed as if he was trying to calm a wild animal. Perhaps with the way you acted, you seemed that way to him.

You took a deep breath, accidentally inhaling his scent, a mix of pine trees and a subtle hint of campfire smoke and musk that made you want to bury your face in his chest and stay there. Desire shot straight between your legs, reminding you that it had been a long time since you’d been with anyone. Letting out a shaky breath, you made the poor choice of looking up at him.

You were blinded by his kind smile and seduced by his deep voice. “Do you want to know me?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, I do,” you answered immediately.

He pointed to his apartment. “I live there. Want to share some whiskey?"

You paused. He was a stranger.

A stranger with beautiful eyes and the sweetest smile you had ever seen.

You followed him willingly into his den.

***

You blinked after he turned on the lights. When your vision cleared, your expectations were, fortunately, not met at all.

You had expected a bachelor pad with junk everywhere and clothing on the floor. What you saw was a clean and neat living room with a simple couch and a TV on top of a small entertainment center that held a few blu-rays and a blu-ray player. The short table in front of the couch had a plate on it, a smudge of ketchup and some crumbs on it, and a glass with a little bit of water left.

The man went to pick up after himself, putting the dirty dishes in the sink before going to his pantry. His kitchen looked pretty bare, except for the dried herbs, tied up in bunches under his cabinets.

While he shuffled around bottles, you went to sit on his couch, but not before pausing for a moment to look through the door to his bedroom. He had a bed that looked big and comfy, his sheets somewhat askew but otherwise in place. Didn’t look like there were any clothes or boxes lying around anywhere. So either the man was tidy, or he didn’t own a lot of things.

“Curious li’l one, ain’tcha?” he chuckled behind you.

Spinning around, you could only give him a sheepish grin. “Yup, sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”

He smiled and gave you a tumbler of amber liquid with a giant sphere of ice. “Curiosity like that could get you in trouble one day,” he said mysteriously, gesturing towards the couch.

You raised an eyebrow, but sat down anyway. You took a sip of the ice cold whiskey, enjoying its slow burn down your throat. It was smooth and sweet. “This is fantastic, what is it?”

“It’s a blackberry flavored whiskey,” he replied as he settled himself on the couch, a little closer to you than you had expected. “I thought you might like it.”

“Oh?” You leaned in a little closer. “And why is that?”

“Somethin’ a li’l sweet fer a li’l sweetheart,” he said with a grin. He knew he was being schmaltzy, but you didn’t care. You were eating up his words, spoken with that deep rumble that went right between your legs.

You continued to sip and make small talk with him until your ice had melted and the late night had become the witching hour. But he didn’t seem to mind, and you wanted to stay.

“You got a bit o’ whiskey here,” he said as he leaned in and reached for the corner of your lips, his thumb catching the drop that had escaped your last sip. You flicked out your tongue to catch him, and your eyes met. A heartbeat passed. The whiskey gave you strength.

Taking his hand in yours, you surged forward and kissed his lips, tasting whiskey and his woodsy scent. A low moan came from deep within him, but he did not reach for you. His hands gripped the cushions as he let you take the lead, climbing into his lap and wrapping your arms around him, your fingers kneading his broad shoulders. You kissed the breath from him, desperate to feel him against you.

When you finally broke away for air, you stared at his eyes, now filled with lust and longing, and realized you didn’t even know his name.

He came to the same conclusion. “What’s yer name, darlin’?”

You told him.

He nodded and repeated your name. It sounded so good when he said it. “Feels nice to say it out loud,” he said. “I’m Arthur,” he added as he wrapped his arms around you and held you tenderly. “How far do you want to go?”

“All the way,” you said, grinding your hips against his groin, making him take a shuddered breath.

Without a word, he picked you up and carried you to his big, comfy bed. He dropped you unceremoniously and took off his shirt.

He was ripped. He was built like a man who had worked all his life in a physical job, carrying & lifting. With his tall stature, his broad shoulders, and his huge arms, he made you feel small.

You had never been more aroused in your whole life.

Your body was ready to be thoroughly fucked by this man, and you hadn’t even taken your clothes off yet. You watched hungrily as he undid his belt and dropped his jeans & boxers, your eyes taking in his size. He wasn’t even at full mast yet, and you already wondered if you’d be able to take him all in.

“Your turn, darlin’.”

Taken out of your trance, you took off your clothes as he watched. You started at a normal pace, but when you saw him take himself in his hand and stroke himself while watching you with a lustful gaze, you slowed down, making an attempt to tease him. Already topless, you lay back on the bed and lifted your legs up, sliding your pants upwards. Slowly, you exposed your ass to him, winking salaciously.

He stroked himself a little faster. A soft moan escaped his lips. “Darlin’, yer makin’ it real hard fer me to stay in control here.”

You glanced down at him. “I can see it’s real hard,” you said with a playful smirk.

“Oh, yer goin’ ta get it now,” he said, his grin becoming predatory as he climbed onto the bed. Grabbing the rest of your clothes, he pulled them from you, flinging them over his shoulder before flipping you onto your belly. He gripped your ass and squeezed hard before giving you a firm spank.

“Ooh!” you yelped.

“You want more?” he asked as his hand soothed over his mark.

You could tell he was asking for permission. Turning back to him, you gave him your best pouty face. “Does Sir think I need more?”

Arthur looked immensely pleased with your response. “I think so,” he said, his voice deepening with a thread of command that turned you on beyond belief. He straddled your legs and rested one hand on the curve of your ass. “I told you, curiosity would get you in trouble.”

He spanked you hard once more. “That’s fer sneakin’ glances into my room,” he said. He gave you three more swipes, each in slightly different areas so you wouldn’t get too sore. Then he grabbed your ass with both hands and massaged your muscles, spreading you open as he thrust his cock along the cleft of your rear.

“Yer so obedient, sweetheart,” he murmured as his hips rocked, his eyes fluttering shut for a few moments. Then with his strong grip, he manhandled you onto your back, wrapping his big hands around you and pulling you into his arms. He cradled you for a sweet, gentle moment before rolling you around like you were as light as a pillow before setting you back down onto the mattress. He leaned over you as he reached for the nightstand, pulling out a condom. You watched him slip it on, but he didn’t move to enter you. Instead, he reached down and began to stroke you as he loomed above, watching your reactions.

You moaned and writhed under his deliberate exploration. His hands traveled languidly along every inch of you. When he found a sensitive area that elicited a soft noise of pleasure from you, he lingered, making you whimper and lean into his touch. He finally touched you lower, where you longed for his attention, but to your frustration he continued his study at the same leisurely pace. Soon his strokes became faster and he pressed harder against you. His eyes nearly glowed as he watched you lift your hips towards his hands, imploring him for more. Using his new knowledge to his advantage, he brought you to the brink and then shifted his touch elsewhere, making you cool off before working you back up again until you were going insane with need.

“Please, please Arthur, I need to come,” you begged.

He only smiled as he slipped a finger inside of you. He slowly worked you open enough for two of his fingers, then three. Soon he was dragging you to the edge again, and you hadn’t even had his cock. You were feeling like you were being denied the thing you wanted most.

“Arthur,” you whispered, “I want your cock.”

“Louder, darlin’.”

“I want your cock!”

“And what do you want me to do with it?”

“Fuck me!”

“Say it again. All of it.”

“Fuck me with your cock!”

His smile was wolfish, satisfied that he had heard you beg for your desire. Pressing the head of his shaft against your opening, he pushed, easing his way inside of you.

You were right. He was big, long, and oh so thick. He stretched you deliciously, and you keened softly as he took you, claimed you, made you his in the most carnal of ways. He reached up and slipped his hand under your head, gripping your hair at the base and pulling slightly.

“Eyes on me, darlin’. I want to see you while I’m takin’ you,” he murmured.

You couldn’t look away from him. His look was intense, as if he commanded your entire being, your body his to use for his pleasure. And you willingly gave it to him, letting him sheathe his entire length inside of you. He held you still while your body adjusted to his claim, watching you with an almost proud expression.

“Good li’l darlin’,” he said as he leaned over. He kissed you gently on the lips, then on the forehead, and as if he was overcome with affection for you, peppered kisses along the curve of your cheek and down your neck.

“I’m goin’ to fuck you now,” he whispered into your ear. “You tell me to slow if it’s too much for ya, alright?”

You nodded, sure that whatever he was about to do to you, you could handle it.

He lifted himself up onto his forearms, his hands framing your face. “You look so damn cute,” he murmured before his hips slowly pulled back. “So fuckable.”

Arthur slammed his cock deep inside of you with one forceful stroke. He immediately looked down at you when you let out a cry of surprise. He waited, quietly checking in.

“More,” you whispered.

You thought you saw relief cross his features before he gave you a teasing smirk. “Ask me nicely and I just might give it to ya.”

“Please sir,” you begged, “I need more.”

Arthur gave you a single nod before rocking his hips, building you up slowly, his gaze nearly burning a hole into you with their intensity. As your body stretched and accommodated him, you clawed at his arms, greedily clamoring for him to speed up. He let out a feral growl before wrapping a big, rough hand around your neck, his other hand gripping your leg and spreading you wider for him.

"You think you can take more, darlin'?"

You looked up at him and smiled a challenge.

He began a ferocious pace, angling himself to take you as deep as he could go. All you could focus on was the impact of his body against yours, his thick shaft filling you over and over, unrelenting as a tidal wave.

Soon he let go of your neck so he could sit up and grip your hips with both of his hands. He was fucking the breath out of you with each hard thrust, the sound of his hips slamming against yours filling the room with a lewd rhythm, intertwined with your breathy cries and his low moans of pleasure.

He reached down and stroked you, his touch rough and vigorous, matching the way he was ravaging you in a haze of lust. You could feel yourself sprinting towards that delicious finish line. The end was in sight as your hips jerked wildly, your legs wrapping around Arthur as he thrust even harder and deeper than before.

"Come fer me," he murmured. "I want to feel you lose yerself around my cock."

You screamed as his words broke the dam that was holding back a torrent of pleasure, your climax tearing through your body at breakneck speed. Your legs stiffened, your toes curled, and your fingers dug into his very muscled biceps as you came harder than you ever had. You shook with aftershocks as Arthur continued to thrust, his hands letting go of your hips as he fell upon his forearms, caging you in as he chased his pleasure.

"Fuck sweetheart, I'm comin'," he moaned before he buried his head into the crook of your neck. He gave three more erratic thrusts, then nearly crushed you with his weight as he pressed his hips against yours, keeping himself inside of you for as long as he could.

A breathless moment passed, the two of you trying to catch that elusive breath. Arthur rolled off of you, quickly gathering you into his arms as he tumbled onto his side.

"Goddamn," he finally muttered. "Wasn't expectin' to have such good company."

You turned in his arms so you could see the wide grin on his face. "For once, I'm glad I got lost in the parking lot."

He kissed your forehead. "Me too, darlin'. But let's make sure we don't get lost again." He found your hands under the covers, brought them up to his lips, and kissed your fingertips.

"After all, I only just found you, my li'l darlin'."

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End Notes: Been a while, and of course, all of my pent-up lust just came streaming out of me in a flurry of words and phrases. Hope it’s still hot enough for you, my lovely readers!

#arthur morgan #arthur x reader #arthur x gn!reader #gender neutral reader #nsft #rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #writing #lemon fanfic #fanfic

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someonestolemyshoes · 3 years ago

Note

Yo, saw your post about levihan prompts:

How about Hange discovering Levi’s secret hobby (of your choice)

Feel free to do whatever you feel like

And I love your work! 💕 have a good day

Hello! So sorry for the delay in this one, but thank you so much for your patience 🙏 I got stuck for such a long time in the middle of this ksksks but it is finally done! I also played around a little bit with the whole...discovering a secret aspect, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway! And I hope you're ready for some sweet sweet childhood friends levihan~

Levi likes photography.

This, in itself, is no great secret. Hange can barely remember a time he wasn't following after her with a camera strapped around his neck, or packed into his bag—always within reach, should something striking catch his eye. A little neon plastic toy, at first; each click of the shutter cycled through preloaded images, expert shots of famous landscapes, places they could only dream of seeing. And then, a polaroid—still a toy, in essence, still plastic, still gaudy, but this one took real pictures in real time, and spit them out into their eager, shaking fingers within seconds.

Hange remembers them ruthlessly wafting the little laminate squares and watching with bated breath as black mottled into foggy grey, as the blurred silhouette of the park bench faded slowly into being. It was a fascinating thing, at the time. Magic at their fingertips. The picture turned out fuzzy and overexposed in places, where the sun had glared in over the corner of the park bench, but Levi had settled the little square on his little palms and looked at it like he held the whole world in his hands.

There were innumerable disposable cameras, too. Light little things with reels of film, never enough for Levi's insatiable desire to snap pictures of every single thing he saw. They spent half their childhood in the chemist, sitting in the hard plastic chairs, wriggling anxiously as they waited for the film to develop. Kuchel always handed them the envelope, fat with prints, with a small smile curling the corner of her mouth and a fond twinkle in her eye, and Levi always took it politely, while Hange gave a boisterous thanks, and the pair of them delved greedily into their spoils.

He was older, in his early teens, when he was gifted his first real camera. It was heavy, compared to all the others, a case made of metal with buttons and gadgets and a fancy screen on the back, to preview each picture he took. Levi was wholly enamoured with it. He spent hours adjusting it, figuring out what each button and knob did, how they affected each picture; took countless shots of the same rock in the park until he'd tested every combination of settings he could think of.

He had cycled through more cameras since then. Grown a small collection, each one a little different, a little more suited to particular shots. Hange understood the concept in theory, but the particulars were lost on her, and Levi never took the time to explain. Not that she minded—Levi's pictures were beautiful, breathtaking in the way he could capture even the most mundane details and make them something wondrous. Perhaps for the first and only time in her life, Hange had no desire for the magician to reveal his tricks.

He has an eye for things that Hange simply cannot see. She is observant—to a fault, at times, intensely analytical and endlessly curious. Everything is a question, an opportunity to research, to learn, but she doesn't see the way Levi does.

Wild daffodil. Narcissus pseudonarcissus. Hange sees a perennial flowering plant, native to Western Europe, classified by its pale yellow petals and elongated central trumpet. She sees phylogeny with a rich taxonomic history; subspecies originating all over the globe, some larger, some smaller, some more vibrant and some more muted. She sees anatomy, science.

Levi sees the way the evening sun rusts the buttery petals until they blush; sees the way dew drops hang like pearls from the tips of the leaves in the early morning, when the light is still smoky and thin. He sees a moment to be captured.

It should be impossible for a picture to hold so much detail. Hange can look at Levi's daffodil and feel the way the spring wind blows gently on her skin, the sun warm but the breeze a little biting, a remnant of the fading winter. She can smell the pollen heavy in the air, feel the tickle of short grass on her ankles, hear the trill of songbirds in the branches of distant trees.

His proclivity for photography grows with them. Hange's interests spear out in a thousand different directions, from physics and chemistry to botany, to engineering, to literature and mathematics, to history, languages and landscapes—life is a limitless source of information and Hange chases it every which way, insatiable.

And wherever she goes, Levi dutifully follows, with his camera in hand.

Until now.

Now, they are eighteen. The summer is lazily drawing to a close, and tomorrow, at 8:45am, Hange will be boarding a plane that will take her to the other side of the world to attend the university of her dreams.

And Levi will be staying here.

Despite Levi's perpetual scowling and indiscriminate grunting, their last evening together had overall been a pleasant one. Levi and Kuchel had worked hard on their meal, and it had been nice in a warm, filling kind of way, to spend her last night at home with the two of them.

Now, she and Levi are holed up in his bedroom, while Kuchel had insisted on doing the clean up herself. Hange's mind has been churning non-stop for weeks now, ramping up with each passing day, and tonight, her thoughts are unstoppable, and they spill from her with giddy, jittery excitement.

"The university is huge, but my course is pretty small—only like, 30 places. It'll be easy to get to know everybody."

"Nn."

"And did I tell you? There's a museum right on campus? They've got a huge collection, and I heard students can access it after the first semester."

"Hm."

"And there's a flower garden, too—they've got species from all over the world, Levi. They'll have plants I've never even heard of."

"You said."

"Oh! And—my accommodation isn't all that far from the coast. The water looks beautiful in all the pictures I've seen—look, see?"

"I know. You showed me already."

Hange looks up from her phone, where the screen is lit with a bright, sunny beach, tan sand and a stark blue ocean. Levi flicks his gaze over it and offers a noncommittal shrug of his shoulder. Hange frowns at him.

"You could at least pretend to be excited, you know."

Levi gives her a deadpan stare.

"It looks...warm."

Hange sits back with a thump, and kicks weakly at Levi's shin. She pouts over at him. "Better than nothing, I guess."

They sit at opposite ends of the window bench in Levi's bedroom, legs tangled haphazardly together in the space between them. The window was thrown open in some vain hope of tempting in a breeze, but the air is thick, and the soft wind that does blow is still stiflingly warm. It sways Levi's fringe against his brow, but does little to stave off the oppressive heat.

The sky outside is dark, but it is alive with stars. They cast bright sparks on an inky black canvas, and there is no moon in sight. Already, Levi has snapped pictures of it, twisted dials and pushed buttons and switched lenses until he was satisfied.

It is a beautiful sight. Infinite.

Hange lets one leg dangle out the open window. Levi gives her a sour look and wordlessly closes one hand around her other ankle. She has a long history of behaving carelessly—Levi has borne witness to one too many slips and stumbles to trust her entirely. It would be just like Hange, to miss her flight in favour of a trip to the emergency room.

His thumb strokes back and forth absently. There is a callus there, rough and catching, that scratches against her sensitive skin.

Her predominant feeling is one of excitement. Studying abroad had been a dream of hers for almost as long as Levi had owned a camera—to travel beyond the bounds of their small rural town, to see more, learn more, fuel the relentless hunger in her. But there is an undercurrent of something else, some squirming discomfort that refuses to settle. It intensifies with every sweep of Levi's thumb against her skin until it sits heavy in her gut.

She looks over at him. His gaze is trained out the window, a small frown furrowing the skin between his brows, but his eyes are glassy, with none of their usual sharp, unwavering focus. Whatever he is looking at, he is not really seeing it.

It would be a lie to say that his silence had not troubled her. He had been quiet throughout dinner, opting instead to listen to Hange and Kuchel's companionable chatter as he pushed his food around his plate, and he had barely said a word since they had cleared the table and retreated to his room. He had hardly even looked her way.

Irritation bubbles within her. Levi is always more subdued than she is, content to sit quietly while Hange babbles endlessly, about anything and everything. But he usually has something to say. His silence, today of all days, makes her angry. They have one night left like this—one more night to talk, face to face, before they will be separated for who knows how long, and Levi is offering her nothing.

"Levi," she says, before she can think. Something in her tone must startle him, for he blinks rapidly, as though pulled out of a daydream, and rolls his eyes to look in her direction. His gaze settles somewhere near her shoulder. She bristles. "Can you at least—"

"Levi?" Kuchel's voice is distant, floating up from the bottom of the stairs. Levi looks at the door instead. "Can you come give me a hand for a minute?"

Hange clamps her jaw shut. Levi casts her another sidelong glance, and ticks his tongue against the back of his teeth. He squeezes her ankle once, then pushes himself to his feet. "Don't fall, idiot. I won't be long."

Hange feels distinctly like a child on the verge of throwing a tantrum. It's immature, and perhaps it's unfair of her, but she had assumed that Levi's invitation for dinner might, at the very least, come with a little conversation.

She takes a deep, steadying breath. They never fight, not really—they bicker endlessly, poke each other's cheeks and pull each other's hair, childish rough housing that they never grew out of. But they don't fight and as grumpy as Hange feels about Levi's near silence, she doesn't want to start now. She runs a hand back through her hair and sweeps her eyes about the room, counting long, even breaths as she does.

Levi's room is immaculately neat and tidy. Everything has its place, on clean, dusted shelves, or stacked in straight, neat piles atop his desk. It is a level of organisation Hange has little energy for; she herself is a hurricane, picking up and dropping off detritus everywhere she goes.

But Levi's borderline obsessive cleanliness makes it easy to spot something that is out of place.

Hange's gaze falls on a drawer in the desk. The drawer itself is as immaculate as everything else, gleaming wood and a reflectively polished brass handle. What catches her eye is the corner of a glossy piece of paper, caught when the drawer had been closed.

Hange is a curious creature. Rarely can she hold herself back from exploring an unknown, and now is no different. She unfolds herself from the bench and stretches to stand, then crosses the room on light, tip-toed feet.

Levi is, by and large, a rather private person. He does not share much of himself openly, hides behind an impassive mask, guards what is dear to him close to his chest. Hange is an exception to this rule, whether Levi wanted her to be or not.

As such, she has no real issue prying the drawer open, and is unsurprised by the predictable contents within.

Photographs.

Of course it was photographs.

Her lips tug up in a fond smile and her eyes roll, but it is as she is reaching in to flatten out the rumpled picture that had been poking out of the drawer, that she notices what they are photographs of.

Her.

Hange picks out a stack and sits cross-legged in the desk chair. She flips through them, eyes growing wider with each new picture she uncovers. Every single one is of her. Some recent, some not so recent—some must be from the very first real camera, for she is still in her braces, all thin, gangly limbs and scruffy hair and taped up glasses.

There are pictures of her in the winter, mitten-clad hands wrapped around a paper cup of hot chocolate, blowing steam into the chill air. She can see in stark clarity, the red tip of her nose and the chill bitten over her cheeks; she can almost feel the cold, taste the cocoa on her tongue.

She finds a picture of her from an autumn years gone by. She remembers it as though it were yesterday—they had spent the whole afternoon raking fallen leaves in the courtyard behind Kuchel's cafe, scooping them into a terribly tempting mound beneath the shedding tree. Hange had been unable to resist. Levi had captured her moments after her dive into the pile, sitting up with her weight propped back on her hands, dry leaves clinging to her messy hair and sticking to the fibres of her cardigan. The sun was low, and it cast her in a golden glow, highlighting the vibrant red and orange of the fall foliage around her, drawing out the auburn undertone in her hair and the amber of her eyes. Her smile is almost blinding.

Another shows her in the spring, laying on her belly in the long grass beside a row of blooming daffodils. There is a book spread open before her and she is, as expected, engrossed in it; Levi has snapped the shutter as she was turning the page, the thin edge of the paper caught between the delicate tips of her fingers.

Hange has never considered herself to be particularly pretty. She is just...Hange, a little bit of wild, a little bit of manic, a lot of clumsy and dirty. Being attractive has never been of much concern.

But there is something in the way Levi has photographed her, time and time again, in the way the light catches her, the candid ease of each new picture, that looks....beautiful, in its own way. Somehow, he has made her mess into a masterpiece.

Levi likes taking pictures of things. Plants, rocks, rivers, landscapes and skylines—he likes capturing the mundanity of everyday life and turning it into something spectacular, but he has never done the same thing with people. As far as Hange was aware, Levi had taken very few pictures of anybody at all.

And yet, she holds this pile in her hands, and there are plenty more pictures littering the drawer before her.

There is a strange feeling brewing on her as she stares at them. She had been so excited about moving away to study, so eager to explore the world beyond their quiet countryside home, that the reality of leaving had never truly sunk in. She feels it now though, acutely; a hollow ache in her chest that grows with each picture she flicks through.

Levi has been her shadow for as long as she can remember. There are few memories that he is not a part of, few moments that she can recall in which Levi was not by her side—he has been a constant for her. Something certain and dependable.

And from tomorrow, he will no longer be there.

Hange had known this. She had known it from the moment she had accepted her offer, and she had known it as they looked through her options for accommodation together, as they explored the local area through pictures and videos and maps online. She had known it as they had prepared her visa, organised her finances. Booked her flights. Every step of the way she had understood, logically, rationally, that studying abroad meant leaving Levi behind.

But the weight of it is only hitting her now. The reality of it is like a slap in the face, a punch in the gut—it leaves her shaken and breathless in the worst way.

From tomorrow, Levi won't be with her at all.

Her grip tightens on the photographs hard enough to wrinkle the glossy paper.

She had done a pretty good job of not getting too emotional about the whole thing. For the most part, Hange had been overwhelmed by her own excitement—there had been no time for sadness between all the loose ends she’d had to tie up in order to make the move a possibility. Now though, all that is left is to head to the airport and board her plane. No more distractions.

Hange doesn’t realise she is crying until the bedroom door opens again, and Levi steps into the room, coming to a sudden halt halfway over the threshold.

Hange can't tell if Levi's look of shock is because of the open drawer and the pictures still clutched in her hands, or the tear tracks on her cheeks. He stops dead in the open doorway, fingers still curled around the handle, and for a moment he stares at her with eyes wider than Hange has ever seen them, but then his brow dips low and his lip curls, and his grip tightens around the door handle. Hange holds the pile of photographs close to her chest.

She is expecting anger. She doesn't suppose she could blame him if he lost his temper with her, then. She has a terrible habit of bulldozing into everything, after all, and perhaps this was the one thing Levi had longed to keep secret from her. Her snooping, on top of his already sullen mood—perhaps this is the final straw.

But instead, he turns his face away, staring resolutely into the corner of the room. Starlight spills through the open window. Even in the thin, muted light, Hange can see a vibrant flush colouring the skin high on Levi's cheeks.

Hange sniffles, and wipes clumsily at her cheeks.

"I didn't have you pegged as a closet pervert, Levi," she says, waving the handful of pictures at him. Her voice comes cracked, and weaker than she'd hoped. Levi's knuckles turn white.

It's a funny thing, seeing Levi embarrassed. His emotional expression is usually limited to small twitches, here and there—a slight furrow of his brow, a wrinkle of his nose, a soft twitch of his lip. Hange can count on one hand the number of times she has seen his feelings show so completely. It's almost painful to witness.

"I don't mind," she says. Levi doesn't look at her. Hange looks down at the pile again. "They're nice."

Levi finally releases his death grip on the handle and pushes the door closed. His eyes are still downcast and his cheek is still cherry red, but he hasn't run away and he hasn't snapped at her (yet). Hange takes these things as good signs.

"I didn't know you took pictures of people," Hange says.

"I don't."

"Are you saying I'm not people, Levi?"

Levi lets out a disgruntled sigh. He crosses the room, and plucks the pile of pictures from Hange's hands. His cheeks are still pink, and his brows are still furrowed, but he has composed himself some.

“No, you’re not,” he says. “You’re a creature. You’ve got snot all over your face.”

Hange laughs wetly, wiping her nose with the back of her hand and rubbing the mess on her pants. Levi gives her a look of pure disgust, parking his hip against the edge of the desk beside her and skimming through a few of the pictures. There’s a curious expression on his face, a softness in his eyes that Hange isn’t used to seeing.

“Stalker,” she says. Levi kicks at the desk chair without looking up. “If you wanted a photoshoot, you could have asked.”

Levi scowls. He straightens the edges of the pictures with care, and sets them carefully on the desk. “If I wanted to take pictures of you posing, I would have asked.”

“Wanted to capture me in all my natural glory, huh?” Hange braces her elbows on the desk and rests her chin in both hands, grinning cheekily up at Levi. It must look ridiculous, with her watery eyes and the red point of her nose, but Levi isn't even looking at her to notice.

Levi says nothing. His gaze lingers on the pictures for a little longer, and the colour in his cheeks deepens. Hange nudges him with her elbow, smiling. The pictures are...sweet, in a way. There's something flattering about it. She slumps back in the chair, her smile wavering where a fresh wave of melancholy tugs at the edges of her lips.

“I’ll miss you, you know.” Hange’s voice cracks humiliatingly as she speaks. Levi looks over at her. Hange curses the wobble of her bottom lip and wipes at her eyes beneath her glasses. She isn’t expecting much; Levi is terrible at expressing feelings at the best of times, and so it’s more than surprising when, after a moment of consideration, he nods at her.

“Same.”

Fresh tears spill down her cheeks. Hange presses her fingers into her eyes, trying to stem the flow, ease the sting there. She doesn’t want to spend their last evening together crying, but now that the tears have begun, Hange can’t seem to stop them. A lump builds in her throat, aching beneath her tongue and she can feel her chin wobbling, lips pulling down at the corners. She sniffles pitifully, draws a shuddering breath.

“Oi…” Levi says, though he doesn’t sound angry, or even uncomfortable like she had expected. His tone is gentle. It rips a sob from her.

Hange feels him move closer. He jostles the front of the chair, and when she opens her eyes to look at him she finds him standing right in front of her, between chair and desk, looking at her with a furrowed brow. It’s different to his usual scowl—his brows are a little upturned in the middle, exposing some kinder emotion; something like worry, or concern.

Hange tilts forward until her forehead presses into his chest. Levi’s hand comes up quickly to the back of her head. His touch is familiar, comforting, and Hange cries a little harder when his fingers tunnel into her messy hair, cradling her against him.

She cries until she feels spent, sniffling and gulping empty air. Her fingers twist into the hem of Levi’s shirt as she composes herself, mumbling, “you’ll keep in touch, right? You won’t forget about me?”

Levi clicks his tongue at her. “Stupid,” he says. “As if you’d let me.”

“I’m serious.” She sits back and looks up at her. Her eyes are burning, raw and wet, and the skin of her cheeks stings from crying, but she looks at him with as much determination as ever and says, “call me. Every day.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not! Just once, every day. Even if it’s only five minutes.”

Levi flicks her between her brows. “You won’t have the time, dumbass.”

“I’ll make time.”

Levi scrutinizes her for a moment, then says, “I’ll text.”

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

Levi curls his lip and pulls at a lock of her fringe, muttering, “brat. Why don’t you call me?”

“I will,” Hange says plainly. Levi’s eyes widen a fraction. “I’ll call as much as I can. But you need to call me too, okay? I wanna hear from you a lot.”

There is a long pause, and then Levi turns his eyes away. The light in the room is pale and muted, but it is just enough to highlight the pale flush gathering anew on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. It’s almost cute.

“Fine. I’ll call. Happy?”

Hange grins at him. “Very. And I’ll send you photos of everything, all the time.”

Levi leans down towards her, pinching her nose between his thumb and forefinger and giving her head a little shake. “On your shitty phone camera?”

Hange nods. She bats his hand away and cranes herself up into his space, smiling something wicked. “You’ll hate it. They’ll be all blurry and I’ll have my thumb in the corner of every picture.”

“Pest.”

“Lots of selfies, too. So you won’t forget what I look like.” Hange blindly swipes up a picture from the desk, holding it up between them in front of her mouth and nose. Between Levi dipping down into her space and Hange stretching up into his, they are so close that Levi has to cross his eyes to get a look at it. “Not that I think it’ll be a problem.”

He rolls his gaze up to look at her over the top of the photograph. Up close, Hange can see just how bright the blue of his eyes is, how dark his lashes are; she can see the shadows they cast on his cheeks, the deepening flush bruising the skin red. Levi has always been a pale thing, but now, Hange can see the smattering of light freckles across his nose, barely visible in the low light. He looks pretty. Her heart stutters in her chest at the sight.

Hange has never fully understood Levi’s drive to photograph everything. To preserve any given moment, bottle up every minute detail. She sort of understands it, then—it’d be nice, she thinks absently, to save this particular view for forever. The thought makes her face grow warm.

“I won’t forget.” Levi’s voice is quiet, caught somewhere between embarrassment and uncertainty. He sways closer, rocks back, hesitates. And then he leans down and lets his forehead drop against hers. Hange can feel the press of his nose against her own, separated only by the picture between them.

Hange is used to being close to him. She’s a clingy person by nature, always grabbing him and hugging him, smooshing her cheek against his or shoving her face into his hair, but she is always the one to initiate such contact. Levi is tactile, in his own way—small, non-invasive touches, his fingers on her wrist or his palm at her back, always delicate, understated.

To have Levi enter so wholly into her space like this is new. It’s nice. Hange finds herself feeling very, very thankful for the paper between them, for the urge to lean forward and kiss him comes unbidden, so suddenly she isn’t sure she’d be able to resist the impulse if there hadn’t been a barrier in her way.

“Is it my dazzling good looks?” she says, acutely embarrassed by how breathless she sounds. Levi makes a small, noncommittal noise. His fingers find hers where she’s holding the picture, gripping it and pulling it until it slips out from between them. For the smallest moment, Hange feels the skin of Levi’s nose against hers, and the warm puff of breath on her lips, and then Levi straightens up, flipping the picture for her to see it.

“I’ve looked at your ugly mug every day for long enough. Don’t think I’d forget it so easily.”

It’s a truly unflattering photograph. Hange has her head tipped back, laughing boisterously at some thing or another, with her eyes pinched closed and chocolate sauce smeared over her lips, a drop of cream stuck to the end of her nose. Hange is sure she has looked better, but the thing is—despite her state, the picture still isn’t bad. Hange can hear the lilt of her own laughter and feel the tacky syrup, savour the sweetness of the cream on her tongue. There’s something so...animated about it, about the way the light dances over her skin and in her hair, and the way the background blurs around her, drawing her into sharp focus.

It’s nice, in a strange, unreserved kind of way.

But she’s still a mess. Hange snatches it and slams it down on the desk, glowering up at Levi.

“Why would you take that,” she whines, petulant. “You’re supposed to take pictures of nice things!”

“Because it’s very...you,” He says, neatly slotting the pictures back into the drawer, and moving back to sit on the window. Hange follows, drops herself onto the ledge opposite him with a pout.

“What, disgusting?”

Levi shrugs. “Messy. But...not bad.”

“I’m supposed to take that as a compliment, I guess? That’s almost sweet coming from you, Levi.”

Levi scowls over at her. She dangles one leg back out the open window, dropping the other heavily into Levi’s lap. He adjusts it until he is more comfortable, his hand wrapping again around her ankle, but does not let go once he has settled. He keeps a hold of her, his fingers tracing thoughtless patterns on her skin. The space between them is warm, comfortable. Hange leans her head back and breathes it in—the peace, the quiet, the simple pleasure of spending a tender evening with her favourite person in the whole world.

It’s nice. A small, frightened part of her doesn’t want it to ever end.

Hange has been set up in her student apartment for three weeks when the package arrives.

Moving had been harder than she had anticipated. She’d accounted for common issues—problems with her visa, her plane tickets, and had checked multiple transport options from the airport to her accommodation in case problems arose—but she hadn’t put all that much thought into what would happen once she settled at her apartment.

Unpacking had been boring. Her roommates were nice enough, the studious, bookworm-y type, but unlike Hange they weren’t overly sociable. They kept mostly to themselves in their rooms, perfectly content with brief conversations in the kitchen before retiring again, and with classes still two weeks away, Hange was finding the lack of social interaction difficult. She had explored some, but the city was vast in a cluttered, claustrophobic way. Hange had always enjoyed travelling, and had talked relentlessly of every adventure she could take herself on in a whole new country and all the new places she could explore, so much so that it was almost embarrassing, the way she had found herself so unwilling to stray too far from her accommodation without a companion by her side.

She’d felt a little homesick in the first couple of days, lonely and isolated. She missed the small comforts of the country, things she hadn’t even realised she had taken for granted. Quiet nights. Star studded skies. Long grass and trees and the fresh, earthy smell on the breeze. The city was unbearably loud at times, and even when the wail of sirens or the beep of car horns quieted, there was an unidentifiable hum beneath it all that never ceased even for a moment.

She felt Levi’s absence most acutely. Hange had known she would, but she hadn’t been prepared for how much it would hurt to be apart. She felt silly for it—it was ridiculous, to miss her friend more than she missed her own family, even. But Levi’s presence had been more constant than anything else, back home, and without him, she felt like a small part of herself was missing.

He called, as promised. Once a day, though oftentimes it was very late in the night for him, and he sounded tired. If Hange were less selfish, she might tell him to get some sleep instead—but she missed him. Hearing from him was the best part of her day.

It was about an hour before their designated call time when the post came. Hange answers the bell with a frown, which only deepens when the delivery driver hands her the package.

She takes it into her room, settling cross legged on the bed and inspecting the mystery item. It's a decent size, like a large shoe box, wrapped neatly in brown paper with her address lettered in tidy, familiar handwriting in one corner. Hange’s stomach lurches—she’d have recognised the writing anywhere, but her suspicions are confirmed by the return address. Levi’s.

She rips into the paper quickly, snatching up her keys to tear through the tape on the top of the box. It is stuffed full with packing paper, an envelope with her name on it sitting on the top. Hange picks it up and with trembling fingers, she opens it and unfolds the short note inside.

Hange,

Sorry things have been kind of shitty. This stuff might help or it might make things worse, but I figure you can just throw it out if it’s no good. Or give it away. Whatever. I don’t even know if all of this shit will make it through customs, so if you get an empty box it’s not my fault.

I don’t get how you eat half this junk, but I hope it makes you feel better, anyway.

Look after yourself. Eat real food.

Levi

Hange presses the note to her chest, grinning. Her heart aches, but having Levi go to this much trouble for her...it feels nice. Knowing he is still thinking of her. She’d never have admitted it out loud, but Hange had been concerned that perhaps Levi would forget about her after all, without her there to pester him all the time.

She pulls out some of the packing paper, and smiles widely at the rest of the contents.

Levi had put together what Hange can only call a care package. There are packs of her favourite snacks and sweets, things she’d complained she hadn’t been able to find in stores here; crisps, chocolate, hard candy, little mini boxes of sickeningly sugary cereal. There are tea bags with blends Levi knows she likes, each neatly labelled with instructions on what temperature to brew at and how long for. Levi had also packed some of the soaps Hange likes, the ones he uses but she refuses to buy for herself. The lavender scent drifts up out of the box and Hange’s heart squeezes tight in her chest. There’s a shirt in there, too—Hange recognises it at once, as one of Levi’s old, worn tees, thin grey cotton that feels impossibly soft in her hands. It’s far too big for either of them, and had always been the go-to item Levi would chuck at her when she decided she was staying over for the night and had nothing to wear to bed. Hange pulls it on quickly, savouring the soft feel and the smell of it.

In the bottom of the box, there is another envelope. This one is thicker than the first, and Hange knows what it contains before she even opens it.

Photographs. A small pile of them, depicting places she and Levi had frequented from when they were children right up until this last year—her favourite part of the forest, where the trees thin out and the river pools at the foot of a small waterfall. The great, open fields, sometimes full of long grass, sometimes clipped short and striped with windrows. Kuchel’s cafe, with umbrellas raised to block the sun on the tables outside, or else warm and low-lit and cosy in the cold winter. Hange settles back on her pillows as she flicks through each picture, a soft smile on her face. Looking at the images of home hurts, but it isn’t a terrible pain—she longs for these old times and these familiar places, but each recovered memory makes her happy.

In Levi’s pictures she can vividly recall moments in each and every location. He works some kind of magic with a camera, to trigger so many sensory memories—the scent of freshly cut grass, the feel of hay, dry and sharp, poking into her back through her clothing, and the gentle trickle of the river water, the splash of it as it runs over the falls, the feel of it cool on her skin. The tangy zest of fresh-pressed orange juice in the cafe, peach fuzz on her lips and the soft flesh of ripe fruit bursting between her teeth, sticky nectar coating her fingers.

Hange looks at each picture in turn, until she reaches the bottom of the pile, and there she stops abruptly, eyes widening at the last photograph Levi has packed for her.

It is one of Hange, taken in the window of Levi’s bedroom. She was looking out at the night sky, her elbow braced on her bent knee, chin in her palm, a small smile lifting the corner of her mouth. The starlight haloed her, shining from her hair and illuminating the jut of her chin, the curve of her nose and the slope of her brow. Behind her, Levi had captured the bright glow of the stars like jewels on a deep velvet canvas. She looked peaceful. Happy. For lack of a better word, beautiful.

Hange grins widely. Her eyes sting and her throat aches, but the picture—the whole box, really—makes her happier than she's felt in weeks. She brews her favourite cup of tea from the blends Levi had sent her and settles into the corner of her bed, lifting her phone to snap a quick selfie. She sends it to Levi, complete with a caption: thank you for my presents 😊 all ready for your call!

Levi responds almost immediately, first with a simple you're welcome. And then, after a minute, you look good. Speak to you soon.

Hange sinks deeper into the cushions, cradling her tea close to her face, masking the pleased flush on her cheeks with the heat from the steam.

Hange keeps him longer than usual, today.

There is a simmering warmth in her stomach as she listens to Levi's voice over the line. It comes tinny through the speakers, low and rough in the late hour, and his dark, grainy image looks tired, lamp light casting him half in shadow. They talk of everything and nothing, same as always—Levi tells her about his day, about the cafe and Kuchel, and Hange pouts as she tells him how little progress she is making in befriending her new housemates. Levi never voices any concern for her aloud, but Hange can sense it in the dip of his brows as she talks. She gives him a genuine smile when she reassures him that classes will start soon, and she's confident she will settle better after that.

Levi seems reluctant to leave, but after a little over an hour of aimless, comfortable chatter, he is yawning and blinking heavily, the lower half of his face nuzzled into his pillow. In the end, Hange makes up some watery excuse about visiting the coast while the sun is still high, if only to let him get some sleep.

"Sure. Have fun."

"I will! Sleep well, Levi."

Levi hums. The view shifts, blurry and indistinct, the mic muffled by the rustle of sheets, and when everything settles he is laying on his side, fringe mussed and falling over his eyes. He covers another long yawn with his fist. "I will."

"You'll call tomorrow?"

Levi rolls his tired eyes, but the corner of his mouth pulls up in a fraction of a smile. "Sure."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Hange grins. Levi watches her for a long moment, eyes scanning over her face. Then he holds up a hand in a tired wave. "Night, Hange."

"Night."

Hange stares at the screen for too long when the call ends. That terribly selfish part of her would have loved to keep his company for the rest of the day. Maybe, with a little travel sized Levi in the palm of her hand, she'd have been brave enough to explore some more, enthused about all the new things to see with somebody to share them with.

Sighing, Hange drops her phone to the desk and stands from the bed, stretching. There are still things she can do—she has plenty of recommended reading to get through, a small mountain of books at her disposal, and she has mapped the route to her campus often enough that she isn't feeling too overwhelmed by the prospect of the journey.

As she heads for the door, Hange notices something on the floor beside the bed. A neat, rectangular piece of paper; one of the photographs Levi had sent her, laying face down on the ground.

She picks it up again and brings the paper close to her face. Levi had written something on the back of it in small, quick letters, less tidy than his usual practiced script, as though he’d scribbled it as an afterthought, or else that he wasn’t sure he really wanted her to read it.

There is a date, the same night she had found Levi’s secret photo stash, followed by Hange’s name, and the location of the shot. And beneath that Levi had scrawled a few words. Hange squints to read them, and then her eyes grow wide, blinking owlishly down at the note. Her heart swells almost painfully and something solid balloons within her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. Her lips tremble into a smile as she props the picture carefully on the bedside table.

The day is still young. Hange brews herself another cup of Levi’s tea and settles on the bed with one of her books, content to spend the next few hours reading—though she finds it strangely difficult to focus, with the words Levi had written on the back of the photograph swirling round and round in her head. Hange doubts they will leave her any time soon. They left her feeling more homesick than ever, but there is a soft, giddy kind of comfort in them all the same. It's a feeling that Hange will savour for as long as she possibly can.

It's weird here without you. Come home again soon x

#ask #levihan #my writing #snk #the way this has kicked my ass for hjkjhg MONTHS #I'm so sorry for the delay but thank you so much for the prompt!!! I was so excited to work on it #and I'm glad I finally got it finished :)#sorry it once again got incredibly out of hand length-wise #drabble my ass

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fandom-blackhole · 3 years ago

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Hi, are you still taking AU requests, and if so: can I get a 77 & a 94 with Agent Whiskey?

I am ALWAYS down to take more of the AU/Tropes! In fact, I should really reblog that post again because I'm in a bit of a writing stump...

Also, this gives me a chance to really test out my Agent Whiskey writing skills, and I wrote this as a little intro into the world I have planned out for a Whiskey fic

77. In Vino Veritas (I am ashamed that I had to google this...)

94. Hair Brushing/Braiding

Send me an AU or 2??

October. It was already October, and you were only a few weeks shy of having been with the Statesmen for an entire year. It seemed like yesterday that you were recruited. You could still see the glinting eyes of Champ as he asked you to join his rank of agents. You'd thought he was mad at first, playing along just for curiosities' sake, but one thing lead to another, and for all the coincidences out there you joined the Statesmen and started working on October 31st, Halloween day. Which was a bit laughable if you considered your line of work heavily involving human direction, being a forensic pathologist and all.

A year... you still couldn't really wrap your head around it. But then again, you were still getting used to this job, after all it seemed like the places was was made to keep you on your toes at all times.

"Cherry, darling, you have got to stop staring at you computer like that. Gonna strain those pretty eyes of yours if you keep that up," speaking of keeping you on your toes, you jumped slightly and your eyes jumped from you computer's digital calendar up to meet those of your favorite, and least favorite, fellow agent.

"Whiskey," you sighed out, "Please tell me your here for something more than just to pester me. I do have work to do."

Whiskey only grinned, and pulled out the chair in front of your little desk before sitting down and leaning back into the chair.

"Now, I would never do something like that to you, darling! I just wanted to come check in on you, make sure you're not stressing yourself over your work."

You sigh harder, and run your fingers over your temples, before looking up giving the man across from you, whose eyes were sparkling with playfullness but sincerity, and you couldn't help but shoot a small smile back at him. "I am fine Agent Whiskey, and I appreciate the concern, but I do have quite a bit to do."

"Oh come on, its almost lunch, let me take you somewhere to get something, on me."

He was smirking now, and you were just shaking your head softly. "No, thank you for the offer, but I did pack a lunch, and I plan to eat right here so I can get through the paperwork that has been piling up."

"Please darling?"

You only shook your head again, and sent him a look of, "this is not a fight you're gonna win", and Whiskey sighed before slapping both legs with his hands and standing up, "Well, I guess I won't argue with you this time, but the offer stands whenever you want to take it."

And with that he left you alone in you office as you sigh and relax back into your chair, a soft pang of regret echoing through your chest before you turned back to you computer, this time to actually get work done.

---

He stayed away from your office for a few days. Something that surprised you a bit considering how much he loved to show up and distract you while he wasn't away on a mission. You didn't hate Whiskey, not at all. In fact, you found yourself constantly fighting a loosing battle with how much you were falling for his charms and teasing. He was a good man, and you new that, but it didn't change the fact that he was a serial flirt, and he probably only came to you for how you flustered and reacted to his advances.

When he walked into your office this time, all swagger and shiny white teeth, you had been gathering your things to head down to your lab, nearly running into his chest as you opened your office door.

"Now, Cherry, had I known you were so eager to jump into my arms, I might have come by sooner."

As always, you sighed and felt hear creep onto your face, before taking a step back and clearing your throat, "Agent Whiskey, please, I have to get to my lab, I have work to do."

He just stood there, smirk plastered on his face, before he held his arm out, and said, "Well then, let me have the honor of escorting the pretty lady?"

You just rolled your eyes and shouldered past him. "Agen-"

"Darling, we both know you can just call me Whiskey, you don't have to be all proper with the agent each time."

Shaking your head you started walking down the hall, listening as his booted footsteps followed after you with a slump of your shoulders. "Agent Whiskey, don't you have work you need to be doing, instead of following me down hallways?"

He only chuckled in response, stopping next to you as you stopped in front of your lab's entrance. "Ok ok, i know when I'm unwanted, I just wanted to make sure you knew about the yearly Halloween party, and make sure you're going this year."

You knew about the party. It was one of the few things the Statesmen did together as a way to let loose and hang out with their friends and fellow agents. You'd been invited to come the year before, but considering you went even officially apart of the organization yet, and you knew no one but Champ, you had not gone to the party. And in all honestly, you were planning on doing the same this year. You still felt to new to really enjoy partying with people you barely knew, having only a few people you did actually converse with, and you meant to tell exactly that to Whiskey, but the second you made eye contact you were a goner. He was looking at you with some sense of eager hope, one that made you ache with guilt for even think about telling the man no. Damn those puppy eyes.

"I....I guess I hadn't really thought about it until now. I guess I could show up for a little while."

The grin that spread across Whiskey's face, highlighting his singular dimple in one cheek had you fluttering under his apparent happiness. "Wonderful! I cant wait to see you there, darling. Find me and ill buy you a few rounds of drinks!"

Still grinning he took a step back, before grinning out, "and don't forget to dress up, it is a Halloween party after all."

And with a wink, he turned and left you cursing your inability to withstand his charms as you shakily pulled yourself into your lab.

---

You shouldn't have agreed to this. You felt silly, and standing outside the party venue you found yourself repeatedly pulling on stupid black gloves that went with your "mad scientist" costume. This is ridiculous, you should just turn and leave and just sit on your couch and watch Stephen King movies all night as you eat far to many fun size candies.

But you were already here, you were already wearing this joke of a costume with black smudges painted across your face as proof of a failed experiment, so you just sighed and yanked on the labcoat dress before taking a deep breath and walking into the party.

Your arrival wasn't late, but you certainly weren't early either. The party had already been in the swing of things for a little while as Purple People Eater rang out across the venue. It was obvious that a few of your fellow agents had already been going after the drinks as they partied, and you couldn't help but cringe a bit at the sight of so many people moving about.

You were debating over staying or leaving again when you heard a loud, but very familiar laugh echo from your right. Turning your head, you had to bite your lip to stop from laughing as you seen Whiskey saddle up beside you. You thought he'd been the living embodiment of a cowboy before, but now, there was no doubt about it. Whiskey had really played into the stereotype, doning a pair of chaps with fringe along the sides, a lasso loosely wrapped around the shoulder of his pearl snap button down shirt, a vest matching his chaps fringe and all, and of course his stetson and his usual cowboy boots now paired with spurs for good measure.

"You, darling, really look every part of a beautiful mad scientist, and id love to be put on the mission to take you down," he finished with a wink, and this time you could help the small giggle that escaped you.

"Please, I didn't think you could look anymore like a cowboy, yet here you are looking like you step out of an old western! Where have you parked the horse? Out back?"

Whiskey chuckled, smirk spreading as you teased him, and his eyes lighting up as he leaded down and whispered, "No horse, but you know what they say, save a horse, ride a cowboy."

Rolling your eyes, you scoffed, looking around the room before you turned back to Whiskey and saying, "I remember you promising me some drinks?"

Grinning, Whiskey motioned for you to walk first as he followed behind to the closest bar. If you were being honest with yourself, you could feel your hands shaking with nerves. You'd never really teased Whiskey back like that before, and while you had enjoyed it, and could tell he had liked it as well, you couldn't shake the nerves that seemed to be following you, the nerves that always followed you when Whiskey was near.

You downed the first drink Whiskey had gotten you, even as he chuckled in surprise before ordering you a second as he only sipped on his own iced whiskey in his hand. The two of you talked, well Whiskey mainly talked, telling stories about past missions and what heroing things he's done, though some seemed a little far fetched to believe no matter how much he insisted upon them. You laughed, and teased him a few times, and as time ticked on and you finished more and more drinks, you found yourself enjoying the party and happy that you actually came.

Then, as you started swaying a bit back and forth from the amount of alcohol you had consumed, Whiskey leaned forward and said, "I think its time I get you home. I think you've have enough fun for one night, darling."

You wanted to put up a fight, you were having fun and going home meant that your time with Whiskey would end, that all this false confidence you had gotten from your liquid courage would fade and you'd be back to just flustering at his teasing words as he followed you down the halls or sat in your small office, and you didn't want that.....you were having fun...you were having fun with the man you liked... a lot...."

Looking up, Whiskey was staring at you, deep pools of brown swirling as he took in your face, which only confused you, was there something on your face? But then Whiskey smiled softly at you, and said, "Come on, I'll drive you home," and you could only melt at his soft words and expression as he guided you out of the party and towards his vehicle.

The second you were seated, you felt your eyes dropping, the weight of the day paired with the alcohol finally making you sleepy, making you slur your words as Whiskey asked for you address, but you eventually got it out as you leaned against his side.

You fell asleep on the trip to your home, only waking as Whiskey nudged you and helped you walked to your home. He even took your keys, opening the home for you as you stumbled inside, not even bothering with changing clothes as you walked to your bedroom and collapsed onto your bed.

"I know you're tired, darling, but you need to shange into something more comfortable, or at least get these boots off, Cherry."

You just whined and rolled onto your back, lifting your leg trying fruitlessly to yank the boot off, before you heard Whiskey chuckle and walk over to help. Gently, you unzipped and pulled off your boots one at a time, making sure to lay your legs back onto your bed softly. He stood there for a few seconds looking over you, before asking, "Anything else you need?"

It took you a few minutes, but in your intoxicated state, all you could think about was how ratty your hair must look, and how you didn't want to deal with it in the morning, so with puppy eyes and a slight piut on your lip, you asked, "Brush my hair for me?"

Whiskey startled, not expecting that to be your answer, but he smiled and nodded, "Of course."

Gently, he sat you up on the bed, before sitting behind you with the brush in hand. "Tell me if I brush to harshly, ok darling?"

You just nod, and sigh when you feel the first knots coming free from your hair. Whiskey was so gentle when brushing your hair, treating you like you'd break if he applied too much force, and after each brush stroke, he let his fingers slide through the untangled locks of hair, occasionally brushing against skin and making you shiver. By the time hed finished, you'd fallen asleep from the soothing movements.

---

The next morning you woke up to a glass of water and some aspirin on your bedside table with a note from Whiskey that just said, thanks for coming last night and little drawing of a cherry, and no memory past Whiskey mentioning something about an electronic bull from hell the rest of the night and getting home a blur with only a soft voice and white teeth.

While when Whiskey woke, all he could think about was your words you had not meant to say aloud,, right before you both left the party, "you were having fun with the man you liked... a lot...."

Permanent Tags: @mysticalgalaxysalad @phoenixhalliwell @moodsare @perpetual-fangirl900 @night-snows00 @dumbass-simp-for-fredweasley @stargazingthenightaway @meabravo @just-here-for-the-moment @masteracewindu

Pedro Boys: @blackmarketmummy @djarin-junk @littlemisspascal

Also tagging @writeforfandoms because I thought you might like this.....

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#au tropes asks #in vino veritas au #hair brushing/braiding au #agent whiskey x reader #jack daniels x reader #let me know what you think of how I wrote whiskey ....please??#is it 2.30am? yes #should i be asleep or studying? yes #but whiskey seemed more important 🤷‍♀️😌

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deancas-fanfiction · 4 years ago

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Hardest Part is Letting Go

Part 1/7

Pairing: Dean Winchester/Castiel

Summary: Upon his diagnosis of a terminal illness, Dean vows to spend the rest of his short life with Cas by his side, completing his bucket list while learning what it really means to live and love.

Also available on ao3.

Dean had never been a romantic – that was always Cas and his extravagant date planning. It was incredibly endearing, but Dean just wasn’t one of those people that cared about that kind of stuff. He loved it because Cas loved it. Funny how a terminal illness can change someone.

It was one year earlier, just after Dean’s thirtieth birthday. Recently he hadn’t been feeling well. His energy level was low, and the sweeping waves of nausea became all too familiar. While low energy wasn’t exactly uncommon for him, this was different. Dean barely had the energy to get out of bed. At first, Cas assumed it was some kind of flu, so they spent day in bed watching old western movies and eating soup. It was a few days later when Dean realized something wasn’t quite right. Along with the loss of energy, came the loss of appetite, and consistent headaches. Dean hid it well, though. After all, he didn’t want to worry Cas or Sam. So he pretended everything was fine for the next few weeks and almost convinced himself he was starting to feel better. He thought that with time it would eventually go away. However, it ws quite the contrary.

One morning Dean awoke at his worst with a sharp, hot pain in his head; it was by far the most excruciating thing he has ever experienced. Biting down on his pillow, he screamed. He screamed until his voice was hoarse, just trying to release some of the pressure in his head. His nails dug into the blankets, begging for the pain to end. Soon darkness took over his vision and he drifted into blissful unconsciousness, away from the pain.

The next time Dean woke up he was in a hospital, with an IV hooked to his right arm and an oxygen tube in his nose. The fluorescent lights were harsh, highlighting the deep bags under his eyes. At least the pain in his head had subdued. His vision became sharper as the flog from the drugs cleared. Dean looked around the room, noting the ‘get well soon’ balloons and cards that littered the room. To his left was a card with a scrawl so ineligible it could only be identified as Sam’s attempt at handwriting. But the thing that caught his attention was Cas, sitting in this stiff chair next to his bed, his head resting on his hands.

Dean shot up, suddenly alarmed as he remembered the events that led to him being here. He sat up, pulling at the IV, panic rising in his chest. His hate for hospitals was heightened and all he could focus on was getting out of here. But then Cas’s head shot up to the sounds of Dean rustling in bed. He scooted his chair closer to the bed, resting his hand on Dean’s.

Dean frowned as he observed his boyfriend’s face. His nose was runny, and his eyes were pink and swollen. He had been crying. It was enough to stop Dean’s frantic movements as his heart rate increased. Cas very rarely cries, and when he does it’s for good reason. Cas ignored Dean’s questioning look. With light touches, he brushed Dean’s matted hair out of his face. It was comforting, but if anything, it just worried Dean more.

An advanced terminal illness. That’s what the test results said.

Those four words ruined Dean and Cas’s life. Those four words unraveled years of plans the two had previously made, imagining they had all of the time in the world. Now he was told he would have two years if he was lucky. Dean’s doctors offered aggressive treatment to prolong the inevitable, but he denied it. He knows what that treatment does to patients. They’re violently ill, bed ridden, and spend most of their time imprisoned in hospitals. Dean wanted to spend the rest of his short life as himself, with Cas by his side.

It wasn’t something to easily become accustomed to. Cas was in denial in the beginning. He went about life as if nothing has changed, but at night he would hold onto Dean extra tight, with no intention of letting go. It went on like this for a few weeks, until Dean came home from visiting Sam for the weekend to find Cas sitting on the kitchen floor sobbing. Dean dropped his duffel bag and wrapped his arms around Cas. He held him close, kissing the top of his head, burying his nose into his boyfriend’s dark hair, memorizing his scent. His hand rubbed small circles on Cas’s back, knowing it comforts him. He nearly let out a humorless laugh at the thought that he was the one dying, but also the one doing the comforting. It was then that he realized Cas is the only that has to live without him. If it was Cas dying, Dean knew he’d be completely broken too.

After they both released the emotions they had been repressing, they actually felt a little better. Now that they accepted the inevitable, they could live each day to the fullest. Without further discussion, Dean and Cas quit their respective jobs to focus on living life in the now. Besides, that’s what emergency savings are for, right?

This brings Dean to where he is now. Sitting in the living room at three in the morning with a glass of bourbon, paper, and a pen. He could feel his health slowly deteriorating and he knew he was running out of time. Dean estimated he had about six months remaining. At night he’d close his eyes and be met with the image of a clock. It would start with the seconds slowly ticking by and then morph into something sinister. Suddenly it was a calendar, with pages tearing away and flying off until there was nothing left but blackness and silence. There was nothingness. He’d wake in a cold sweat, with the constant reminder of the inevitable looming over his head. Dean shook his head, shaking the dark thoughts. He took a sip of his drink before focusing back on the task at hand.

1. Have breakfast in bed

2. Stargaze until the sun rises

3. Kiss in the rain

4. Rent a beach house for the weekend

5. Watch Sam graduate from law school

6. Go on a road trip with a kickass playlist

7. Get married

8. Go skinny dipping

9. Die loved

Dean hadn’t realized he was crying until a tear his list, smudging some of his handwriting. There was still so much he wanted to do, so much more he wanted to see but deep down he knew he didn’t have the time for it. Hell, he didn’t=’t even know if he had time for his list. But he was going to try. He looked back at a few items on the list and managed a small smile, so much for not being a romantic.

Dean looked up when he heard some shuffling and the opening of a door. His eyes met a sleepy Cas, with his blue eyes bleary and hair ruffled more than usual. It was a sight he could never get sick of.

“Can’t sleep?” Cas asked quietly. Dean hummed in response, struggling to get his emotions in check. He hated this vulnerability that came with the diagnosis. Making this list made him even more emotional and he knew that crying in front of Cas would only make things harder.

“Me neither,” Cas sighed, joining Dean on the couch. He leaned into his side, curling in to soak in his body heat. “I can never sleep very long without you next to me.”

Dean smiled at that and kissed Cas on the temple. Cas sighed contentedly before frowning when he saw the list in Dean’s hand. “Is that your bucket list?”

“Yeah, I figured since we have some time, we should make the most of it, you know? And there’s a lot of things I’ll never get the chance to do, so I thought I’d make a list of the ones most important to me.”

Cas gingerly grabbed the list out of his hand and read through it, a sad smile on his face. “No backpacking across Europe?”

“I don’t think there’s time for a trip to Europe,” Dean mumbled. He and Cas had dreamed of backpacking across Europe since they were in college. They talked of romantic stops in Italy for the food, France for the champagne, Ireland for the Guinness and beautiful countryside, Scotland for the scotch, and so much more. Cas just nodded in response, swallowing the lump in his throat. He didn’t want to think about the concept of time at the moment.

“What do you want to do first?” Cas asked, his voice cracking.

“Right now, all I want to do is go to bed with you.”

“Alright, then let’s go to bed,” He replied, grabbing Dean’s hand and leading him into the bedroom with a sly smile on his face.

The next morning Dean awoke with another headache. He wasn’t surprised, it’s been happening a lot more often lately. He sat up and reached for the numerous pill bottles on the table next to the bed and took the numerous pills prescribed to him by his doctors to keep his symptoms under control. Forcing his legs out from under the warmth of the blankets, Dean got up to go see what Cas was doing. While Dean has always slept later than Cas, he usually lays in bed with him reading a book while waiting for Dean to wake. After all, Cas knows how much Dean hates waking up alone.

Just as Dean was crossing the door, he was met with Cas carrying a tray full of chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, a heaping pile of bacon and his usual cup of coffee.

“Cas…” Dean started, realizing what he was doing.

“Dean! You ruined it. To have breakfast in bed, you actually need to be in bed.” He pouted which caused Dean to laugh at his boyfriend. He quickly turned around and crawled back into their bed.

“We don’t have to do everything on the list right away, angel.” He retorted, pulling the warm blankets on his lap. His voice came across softer than the joking manner he intended. His gratefulness for Cas shone through his usual sarcastic façade. Cas chose to ignore the comment and set the tray on the middle of the bed, settling next to him. “But thank you,” Dean added, giving Cas a kiss on the lips.

Cas smiled, his blue eyes impossibly bright in the early afternoon light. Dean sighed, staring as he admired Cas’s beauty. His dark hair is tousled, sticking in all directions accompanied with the stubble that comes from not shaving for a few days. He’s dressed in one of Dean’s classic rock shirts and a pair of boxers, with the smell of coffee lingering on his breath. Dean smiles at him, bacon momentarily forgotten, only consumed by thoughts of Cas. When things get bad, he wants to remember this specific moment and how happy the two of them are. ‘When things get bad…’ Dean ended that train of thought and shook himself out of his daze, turning his attention to his delicious breakfast instead.

________

A/N: Hi friends! I’m so excited to post my first Dean/Cas fanfic! I’ve written for other fandoms before but I just can’t shake the finale so here’s my coping mechanism. This fic is finished, totaling at about 15,000 words. I plan to post either weekly or twice a week, depending on the reception this gets. Please let me know any feedback or submit any prompts!

#destiel #fanfiction #deancas #supernatural fanfiction #destiel fanfiction #destiel fanfic #angst #fluff #eventual character death #dean knows how to communicate his feelings for once #dean winchester #castiel #alternate universe #chaptered

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feverinfeveroutfic · 3 years ago

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chapter six: the black night

Sam and Alex spent about an hour of that first day in Germany there in the hotel room, away from the world, and with only each other. Neither of them were fatigued from the overnight flight. She had considered on taking her journal out for herself and for a drawing of something, much like how she made a special drawing for the show in England. But she had no idea if she should share her work with Alex, especially when he caught a glimpse of her doodling a sunflower on the inside of the journal's cover.

He sat next to her on the bed, in his little shorts, white socks, and his Gary Moore shirt, and with his legs pulled up a bit, and his hands right between his thighs. She gasped at his looking on at what she was doing and she covered up the doodle with her hand. He in turn gasped in response to that. She realized that he had seen her art but he hadn't known that it was actually her.

“Is it okay if I have a peek?” he asked her in a small voice and with his eyebrows raised which enlarged his deep eyes a bit.

“It's—It's kind of private, though,” she told him.

“I liked it, though,” he confessed, still in a small voice. “Basquiat died a few weeks ago, so I like to see another artist ascend to the position of greatness at some point.”

“I'm no Basquiat, though,” she insisted.

“Well, yeah. Every artist is unique. Basquiat was one of a kind—and even from a small sliver of a glimpse into your art book here, I can tell that you yourself are one of a kind. And that little thing you were drawing just there piqued my interest a bit. So—” He bowed his head and he raised his eyebrows even more, which softened his face to that of a young boy. “—is it okay if I have a little peek?”

He then lifted his head.

“I mean, it's only fair. You got to see the beginnings of our new album—twice! You're also seeing the transition of eras between albums.”

She swallowed and she leaned forward a bit to make sure that they were alone in the hotel room: Greg had gone off with Eric and Louie to have breakfast, while Chuck and Tiffany went out somewhere.

She then moved her hand out of the way to show him the little sunflower.

“Oh! Have you seen the painting that Vincent van Gogh did? The one of the sunflowers?”

“I have, yes! A few times, actually! It's—probably one of my favorites from him, to be honest.”

His face then lit up and he snapped his fingers.

“You know—we are in Europe, and on the western side of the Iron Curtain no less. It's not like we're back on the West Coast where you kind of have to set aside a whole few days just to go from L.A. to some place in Oregon or wherever. We can get on a train and go up to Frankfurt and visit a museum.”

“Would you take me there?” she gasped at that.

“Samantha, this is Europe,” he told her. “Ever since the war ended, they've been all about a revival of culture here. So—you know, I don't really wanna sit around here in my shorts and watch German TV all day long, either. I know you don't, too.”

“I don't,” she confessed with a shake of her head.

“Well, then.” He clicked off the television and he stretched out his long lanky legs before him. “Let me put some pants on and we'll catch the next train up to Frankfurt. It's only a few hours anyways.”

“Maybe we can go up to Copenhagen, too?”

He stopped. “If there's time today, we shall see.” He flashed her a wink and then he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, and he walked over to the bathroom with his jeans. Sam closed her journal and she tucked her pencil right up next to the spine as she set it off to the side on the bed cover. She climbed off herself to put her shoes back on; soon he came back out with his black hair a bit more frizzy than she had seen before and a big silver skull ring on his right hand.

“I can see you being a continental of sorts, Alex,” she confessed.

“A continental?” he laughed.

“Yeah. I mean, you're smart and you're in touch with the world at large, and you like art, too.”

“I dunno,” he said with a shrug, “I feel like if you're considered a continental, you actually have to hail from the continent of Europe. Remember, the last name is not only Jewish but it's Eastern European.”

He adjusted the big ring on his right ring finger: it almost looked too big for his hand.

“Why a skull?” she chuckled at him.

“Why not?” he asked as he flashed it to her. “It's actually a symbol of life. Like a carpe diem—a reminder that the clock is ticking for me and for all of us. I also wanna think for myself, too. I've also got it on my right hand because I ain't married.”

“Mr. Swinger,” she teased him, and he scoffed at that. “You are in fact a continental!” She picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder.

“I've got a bit of money on me,” he assured her. “It's not a lot 'cause of the whole exchange rate and everything, but it's better than nothing, though.”

“I've got money, too,” she told him as they stepped out of there and into the hallway. He shut the door and tucked the room key into his front pocket.

“Remember if someone asks us, we're just hanging out together,” she told him as they walked on to the lobby and the front doors.

“Well, yeah, of course.” He chuckled at that, and they kept on going to the sidewalk outside. Chuck and Tiffany strode back into the hotel right then.

“Where you guys going?” he asked them in a big jovial voice.

“Frankfurt,” Alex promptly replied. “Taking the train up.”

“Have fun, kids,” Tiffany said with a smile on her face.

A beautiful but gray day there in Bavaria: Alex peered up to the sky overhead with his eyes squinted and his lips parted a bit as if he yearned for a glass of water.

“Think I could've brought a jacket with me?” he wondered aloud; the hazy sunlight made his smooth skin appear even more smooth than before. The little tuft of gray almost stood straight up over his brow.

“Nah, I think we'll be fine,” Sam assured him as she took out her sunglasses from her purse and put them upon her face. They walked side by side down the sidewalk: right at the corner was the sign to the train station, across the street and down the block from there.

“The trains around here run like clockwork,” he told her as they awaited at the corner, “especially those in Switzerland.”

“Like literal clockwork over there,” she said with a grin on her face.

“Exactly!” he chuckled at that. “They're nothing like the trains or the buses back in the States.” He ran his fingers through his hair, and especially through his gray stripe. “Think it's time to dye my hair again.”

“Why's that?” she asked him.

“To rid of this little thing of gray on my head.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I kinda like it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. It's interesting. Like, why is it in a single little plume upon your head like that and not all over?”

“I wish I knew,” he confessed and they crossed the street together. Once he had caught up to her, he spoke up again.

“A few years back, I was brushing my hair and I happened to look down to the sink, and I saw a gray hair there. I picked it up and I wondered where it could've come from. So I showed it to my mom and she goes, 'oh, it's probably from your dad.' But my dad's completely and totally bald, though. He hasn't had hair on his head since before I was born—at least that's according to her, anyway.”

“Wow.” Sam was stunned by that.

“Yeah, and soon another one grew back there.” She thought of the nickname she, Aurora, and Marla had given him at the Legacy shows: the boy with the pearl in his hair. “And, you know that whole thing where you shouldn't pluck gray hairs because more will grow in their place?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

“Well, my mom told me not to do it for that very reason. What did I do?”

“You plucked that one?”

“Yeah. Next thing I know, I got a whole little pocket of gray right there in a few months time.”

She laughed at that.

“And yeah—I have to confess, I'm particularly self conscious of it.”

She stopped laughing right then.

“Aw. Really?”

He nodded his head at that with a downcast look upon his face.

“It makes me look old, you know?” he continued with a lean into her own face. “Like, I'm nineteen looking on at my twenties soon. I shouldn't be going gray yet.”

“But I like it, though,” she insisted. “Like I said, it's interesting.”

He shrugged at that. “I've had people ask me if it's a birthmark, but who knows, really.”

Sam thought about the conversation that she had had with Aurora and Marla about that little pearl of gray, about the boy with the pearl in his hair. She couldn't exactly recall everything about it as he held the train station door for her.

“Thank you, dear gentleman,” she told him as she took off her sunglasses before she headed inside.

“Herr Skolnick and Fraulein Shelley,” he corrected her as he shut the glass door behind them. “That's the only German I know so far. That's according to this guy Louie talked to while we were in there.”

“Pronounced 'froy line', you said?” she asked.

“Yeah, he broke it down for the two of us, too. It literally means 'young lady.' Kind of ironic because I'm actually younger of the two of us.”

Sam giggled at that and he led her over to the ticket booth, which stood wide open just for them.

“Two single adults to Frankfurt, please—round trip,” he kindly told the man, and he took his wallet out from his front pocket.

“A combination for you and your girlfriend, too?” he asked Alex in a light German accent, and he was taken aback by that.

“Oh, she's not my—” He gestured to Sam.

“Couples get half off on the midday rides,” he continued, and Alex and Sam looked on at each other with knowing glances.

“Uh—yeah, we'll take it,” Alex told the man; and he snickered at the whole notion. “Good idea, right, babe?”

“Yeah, baby!” Sam went along with it. Alex took out a couple of euros from hiding and the man inside handed him a pair of tickets.

“For the Amerikanischer and his kleine Dame.”

“How do we say 'thank you'?” he asked the man.

“Danke schoen. 'Please' is bitte.”

“Oh, right, right, right! Uh, yeah, danke schoen.” He gazed on at Sam with a bemused look on his face, but she couldn't help but giggle at him as he handed one of the two to her. All the way towards the platform, she resisted laughing more at him. They stood there in anticipation of the train and the gray sky overhead darkened a bit with more rain clouds. Alex cupped a hand to his mouth to stifle his laughter. Sam felt her face grow warm from the feeling.

“Man,” he muttered and he shook his head.

“For real. I was not expecting that.”

He snickered some more.

“Couldn't beat that with a stick, though,” he said in a low voice.

“No way.” Sam thought of Bill right then and his incessant penny pinching. At least there she was headed into an art museum in central Germany and not a little market the size of someone's house down the street from her. There was a good reason with Alex: if she put any thought into Bill's behavior, it would ruin her day out with Alex himself.

“I got us the parlor car, by the way,” he told her; far off to his left, the silver train turned the corner on the railroad.

“Oh, you big stud!” she joked as she knew the man in the booth was still in earshot from there. He chuckled at that. The train rolled up before them and they soon boarded it one after the other. They were greeted by the warmth and comfort of the parlor car: nothing like the parlor cars back in the States for sure.

They took the spots closest to the window, but before she took her seat there, Sam spotted a small bar tucked in the far corner of the car behind them.

“Care for some authentic German beer?” she offered him with a gesture towards the bar.

“Bitte, meine Dame,” he joked, and she giggled at him and then she stopped. “Wait, that was good. You are a continental!”

The train rolled forward and she made her way over to the heavy white stone bar tucked in the corner. The female tender with the short bob of maroon tinted black hair showed her a smile in response.

“Two glasses of—ooh, Belgian beer, please,” she said.

“Two glasses, you said?” the woman echoed in a thick French accent.

“Uh, yeah—for me and my boyfriend over there,” she told her, and she had a difficult time in stifling a giggle at that. The bartender poured her and Alex a pair of glasses of that rich dark Belgian beer; when she handed the first glass to Sam, she looked behind her to the seat next to the window and gasped.

“Oh, my god, 'e is a beautiful boy,” said the woman in a hushed voice.

“Yeah, I guess he is,” Sam told her with a shrug.

“No—cherie, listen to me. 'E is a beautiful young man. I 'ave never seen a boy so beautiful as 'im.” She turned her head back in Alex's direction: the way the gray light of the day glowed back onto his milky skin so it resembled to porcelain and onto the plume of gray upon his head, and his jet black hair appeared blacker than normal. She handed Sam the next glass of beer. “You Americans—you must take care of one another and love one another. Take good care of 'im.”

Even though Alex wasn't her boyfriend, she couldn't help but wonder how much longer they could carry the whole charade out there in Europe.

“How much are these?” she asked with a gesture to the glasses.

“Five euros, s'il vous plait.”

Sam handed her five bills and then she picked up the glasses. “Is it—merci?” she asked her.

“Oui! Merci beaucoup.”

“Uh, merci beaucoup! He's learning German and I'm learning French so it—just makes sense.”

“Right? Enjoy your ride, ma cherie.”

Sam felt her face grow warm once more as she headed back to the seat across from Alex.

“Looking—as—red as a—cherry—tomato,” he stammered given neither of them were sure the woman was within hearing range of them. Sam giggled at him and he shrugged his shoulders; she handed him the glass before she took a seat across from him.

“I should tell you that this place that we're playing at this weekend, Schweinfurt—it's a few miles from the Iron Curtain. Like the border to East Germany is literally right down the street from there. I looked at it on this atlas that my parents have before we left—it's nuts.”

“Oh, wow, really?”

“Yeah—and I saw the train route while I was getting tickets in there. It's right after Nuremberg, too. We get to Nuremberg and then we hang a left and we're in Schweinfurt. Apparently, we have a stopover there!”

“Cool! So we get to see a little peek at it?”

“Exactly. Stopover there and then it's onto Frankfurt. Beyond that is Cologne and Essen, and then Amsterdam. But that's a full day's trip, though—Munich to Amsterdam.”

“Like, something to set aside for a whole trip altogether.”

“Right! We went to Amsterdam last summer for that festival that we played—you know, Eindhoven. Beautiful there. You think Germany's beautiful. I wanted to visit the van Gogh museum but we were kinda strapped for time, though.”

“Some day,” she remarked.

“Definitely, some day.” He raised his glas to her and they made a toast to each other. They took a sip of the Belgian beer in unison: nothing like any drink Sam had had back in the States, or even the cocktails that she had with Marla back in England. This was strong and full but nothing to get the both of them drunk, however.

“Oh, my god,” she blurted out as she brought a hand to her chest.

“Yeah, that's unreal.” He gaped at the sensation and rolled his eyes a bit, and she giggled at him, and he showed her a smile in return.

Within the hour, they stopped over in Schweinfurt and Alex pointed out the window. Beyond the train station was a street: off in the distance, Sam could see the pavement recede back into the heart of the city. A part of her expected to see a full on brigade off in the distance but she knew that the Soviet Union still loomed over them, and even more so from the station there at the edge of West Germany. Indeed, she spotted two men on the sidewalk wrapped in red and black overcoats and with batons latched to their belts.

“Soviets,” Alex pointed out. “See the hammer and sickle on their chests?”

Sam took a closer look: embroidered on their chests were little medallions. Even from the train window, she could make out the shape of the hammer and sickle inside there. It almost didn't even look real, even from a distance.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed out.

“I remember when we came over here last summer to play at Eindhoven festival and Louie, Greg, and I came here to Germany first before Chuck and Eric did, and I saw one of them when we got close to the border. Probably the most surreal moment of my life. It's like 'oh my god, it's real.' You know what I mean?”

“Oh, yeah!”

Those men merely stood there on the sidewalk as if they awaited something. But within time, the train rolled out of the station and westward to Frankfurt. But at that point, it was almost three in the afternoon, which meant they only had a couple of hours to relish in an art museum.

But there was absolutely nothing in the world that Sam could get past and that was the big beaming smile on Alex's face the whole rest of the afternoon.

The cold expression that she had grown almost all too familiar with had completely vanished and gave way to one of true joy. In those few hours as they walked along the cobblestones and visited a bakery for a bite of late lunch of open faced sandwiches and Black Forest cake, and then they continued on in search of the arts to nourish themselves further, every time Sam looked over at him, he looked up at all the buildings around them with a sweet smile plastered on his face. The happiest he had been up to that point, and he wasn't even with Testament right at that moment.

They were alone together in Germany and he enjoyed every moment of it.

At one point as they walked to a bookstore on a corner, she considered putting her arm around his shoulder. She had to stop herself, however: he wasn't her boyfriend.

But he certainly felt like it as she bought him a big glazed sugar cookie from another bakery.

“I'm gonna gain so much weight hanging out with you, Samantha,” he joked as he took a slow sensual bite; he rolled his eyes into the back of his head as if he experienced an orgasm.

“Get some meat on those bones,” she retorted, and the bakers laughed at that.

By the time the sun hung low over the horizon, and the gray sky began to change colors to a rich royal blue, they began back to the train station. Alex lovingly patted his stomach by the time they stepped on the platform. She had never seen him more contented as they gave the conductor their tickets before they stepped aboard. He snuggled down in the seat by the window on the right side: that time, they didn't have a table between them.

“Back to Schweinfurt!” he declared with a big beaming smile on his face.

It was the happiest she had ever seen Alex; she nestled close to him as if he was in fact her boyfriend at that point. His body was warm from the food, his face was rosy from the Belgian beer, and his hair was soft from the moisture in the gray skies overhead. Even if it was only for a few hours, she knew she had done him good that day. She had done what the bartender in the previous train wanted her to do for him.

As the train started moving, he leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. That time there was no arm rest between them, but a bit of a divet separated their seats, so she couldn't lean all the way over to him to cuddle with him. But he was warm and full: she had to relish in the soft feeling from his body.

He gave his dark hair a little toss and he looked at her with that sweet smile still upon his face.

“Still wanna dye your hair again?” she asked him as she eyed the gray tuft over his brow. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Don't really know, to be honest,” he confessed, “after today, I just might keep it.”

“As black as the very night itself,” she whispered to him.

“As black as night—but the gray as bright as day.” He winked at her when he said that and she beamed at him.

Soon, they made their stopover in Schweinfurt and that time around, they had enough time to step off the train. Sam went on to the ladies' room while Alex made his way over to the ticket booth for a question.

She surfaced out of there when she spotted those black curls right in front of her, but without his guitar on his back.

“Hey, Joey,” she greeted him in a soft voice, and he turned his head and flashed her a grin.

“What you doin' here?” he asked her.

“Oh, just—checking the place out,” she replied; she didn't dare tell him that she was there with Alex lest he fly off the handle at the mention of his name.

“You know, we're only a little ways away from the border of East Germany,” he told her.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, I know.”

“We get any closer—goin' down this street here—we get stopped by the cops over there.” He glanced up to the clock on the far wall. “We better hustle on back to the train.”

“I should ask you what you're doing here, then,” she retorted back to him, and she couldn't resist the grin on her face.

“I'm doin' what you're doin' and checkin' the whole place out. I got nothin' better to do, to be perfectly honest wit' ya.”

“Well...” She thought about Alex in the back of the train station, and his talking to the man in the ticket booth over there.

“Well, what? You wanna mosey on back to Munich and go grab a li'l bite to eat?”

The warm, soft feeling that Alex had bestowed onto her was still powerful and she desired for more of it. “That's real kind of you, Joey, but—”

“Oh, c'mon! You're my girlfriend after all. I can't hang out with my girlfriend in Germany?”

“You have to ask first,” she pointed out with a wag of her finger. The ringing of a bell caught their attention.

“We have to get going,” he told her and he raised his dark eyebrows at her. He began towards the train outside but Alex was still somewhere back there. They were about to leave soon; she chased after Joey towards the platform.

“By the way, I should have to ask you—how'd you get so tan?”

“I got a bit sunburnt a few months ago,” he told her with a shrug of his shoulders. “It all just peeled right off and underneath was all as brown as a coffee bean.”

The soles of his shoes padded on the concrete before them and she hurried after him. She peered over her shoulder: Alex was nowhere to be seen behind them.

Joey reached out for her hand and he led her onto the parlor car of the train, the exact same car as when she and Alex rode up to Amsterdam together. He took one step onto the floor of the doorway and she followed suit. She hung there in anticipation of him. He was somewhere in there.

She would stand there and wait for him if she had to. Even if it meant blocking passengers from boarding themselves. Even if it meant throwing all of the trains completely off schedule from each other.

“Sam?” Joey called back to her.

“Coming!” she replied, and she peered out to the incoming darkness. He ducked out from the station. She recognized that little tuft of gray from afar. He craned his neck in search of her. Even though he wasn't her boyfriend, he certainly felt as such right there as he looked for her.

She waved at him so as to grab his attention. She dared not call his name given Joey was right behind her.

“Sam!” Joey called again.

“Alex!” she blurted out. “Alex!” He turned his head right as the last few passengers boarded the car in front of her. He bolted right there and ran towards her. The train was about to leave right there.

“Hey!” Alex called after her.

“Sam, c'mon!” Joey insisted and he grabbed her by the hand and he took her aboard the train. The doors closed before Alex could come on board himself. He pounded on the doors but it was useless and too late at that point. The train rolled forward right then and there.

“HEY WHAT THE FUCK!” he shouted on the other side of the glass; his big voice echoed over the train. Joey dragged her to the seats on the other side of the train, unbeknownst to it all. Sam stood there before him, unsure as to what to do next. She knew that Joey was turning a blind eye to him.

“HEY!” Alex called out and he waved his arms about. She gasped at the sight of him there on the platform with his arms straight up in the air. She turned to Joey, oblivious to what had happened.

“Oh, no,” she muttered under her breath. She knew that the next train would be there soon enough, but she still left Alex behind, and about a mile away from the border no less. At least they were still in West Germany and they hadn't crossed over the Iron Curtain at any given moment. But if what he had told her about it remained true, he was still potentially within harm's way.

“FUCK!” was the last thing she heard before the train went around the corner and away from him. Her false boyfriend left behind about a mile from the edge of the Iron Curtain, and she went with her real boyfriend at that point.

“Care for a cuppa Joey?” Joey himself offered to her with that lopsided grin on his face.

“Um—sure.” She couldn't help from feeling out the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, and especially the heavy feeling inside of her chest. She left Alex behind, but then again, it wasn't exactly her fault. The train was about to leave.

Their small white china cups of coffee soon arrived and Joey was eager for the first taste. She couldn't enjoy it however. She kept on thinking about Alex, all by himself at a strange train station. She also missed the nickname Joey had given the cups of coffee as well: she couldn't exactly enjoy that for herself, either.

It would be another hour and a half before they returned to the station in Munich, and all the while, she thought of him. She wanted to cry but she couldn't, not with Joey right there in front of her.

By the time they reached the station in Munich, it was almost nine thirty and she couldn't bear to look at everyone because she knew someone would ask her what happened. Lucky for her, Joey led her to a small stretch of grass right across the street from their hotel, one that overlooked a small dark lake; before them was a narrow cobblestone walkway and a few metal tables accompanied with spindly chairs. He gestured for her to have a seat on the chair closest to her.

“I'll be right back,” he told her, and she nodded at him. She sat there, all alone, in a foreign city, and she had no idea as to what to say to Alex when he showed up again, that is if he did. Surely he knew that she waited for him at the door. Surely he would understand.

Joey soon returned to her from across the street with two cups of water in hand, and he handed her the one in his left.

“So—you guys are—touring?” she started with a clearing of her throat; she took a sip and the cold feeling upon her tongue was all she needed to feel right then.

“Yeah.” Joey turned his attention to her, complete with a thoughtful look on his face. “By the way, you've been awful quiet lately. I don't ever recall you being so quiet.”

“Oh, it's—it's nothing,” she sputtered out. “I'm just—in awe of—everything.”

Something moved about down on the grass. She spotted that little tuft of gray hair over his brow. He flashed Joey a dirty look and he looked at her with a cold glare. Even from a distance, she could feel his anger. She took a sip of her water as he walked on over to the dry patch of grass down by the waters.

Joey gave his black curls a little toss back from his neck and he showed her that lopsided grin. He then rested the side of his head within the palm of his hand.

“God, you know—it really is just so beautiful here,” he remarked with a glance up to the black sky overhead.

“Yeah—it really is,” she said with a look right into his eyes. “Like—upstate, but more.”

“Right?” She looked into his eyes so she wouldn't have to see what Alex was doing. But she could still see him out of the corner of her eye. Joey peered over his shoulder to the cobblestone walkway behind him with his dark lips still upturned in a joyous smile.

Alex had taken his spot there on the grass not too far from them, and he leaned back onto his elbows and stretched out his legs. Sam wondered where exactly she had gone wrong there with him. She would have to go back to the room with him, after she left him there within range of East Germany to his own whims. She left him there all by himself and he had hardly any money of him to top it all off.

When Joey wasn't looking, she had to talk to him.

Joey himself downed the whole cup of water in four large gulps.

“Let me get you some dinner,” he offered her as he set the cup down on the table.

“Oh, no, Joey it's—it's okay. I'm not hungry.”

“What?” he asked her with a bit of a mocking tone to his voice.

“I really am not hungry.”

“Oh, come on,” he encouraged her. “Some brats and sauerkraut to fill your cute li'l belly—I wanna treat my girlfriend well!”

She swallowed as he stood to his feet and rounded the side of the table. She watched him go across the street to the cafe next door to the hotel: she watched him go inside.

And then she turned her head to the right. Alex had turned around so he could watch her from a distance.

She walked up to him and he glared at her.

“Hey—about earlier,” she started, and he shook his head and he brought a hand to his brow as if he had a headache. She swallowed. She knew she had messed up by leaving him there, and she had to face the music with him, but she couldn't resist the sinking feeling in her chest.

“Alex, listen, he's my boyfriend,” she insisted, and she could feel her stomach twisting itself into a tight knot. Alex stood upright then and he towered over her.

“I know,” he said, terse. “But what I can't understand is what you continually see in him, though. And you ditched me, too!”

She paused right there and her mouth fell dry as a bone, more dry than any alcoholic drink ever left it feeling in the past. He shook his head about at her and nothing could deny the look of disgust on his face, either.

“You,” he stammered and he grew angrier and angrier right there, right before her, “you—you—fucking ditched me right by the boundary to East Germany. You ditched me when you knew damn well that there are Soviet soldiers over that way. How—” His bottom lip trembled and his face turned bright pink. The look of anger on his face twisted into one of heartbreak. They weren't in a relationship but she could tell that she had broken his heart.

“How—How—How could you?” he sputtered and he buried his face in his hands. Sam lunged for him but he pushed her hands away from him.

“No!” he yelped with furious tears in his eyes. “No! No, god dammit!”

“Alex, listen to me—”

“How could you become the very thing you are up against!” His voice broke to where she could barely hear him.

“What?” Sam demanded, stunned.

“You behaved just like that sad sack of nothing you call a friend, Aurora. She made my birthday all about her—you made our day out all about you. How could you!”

“Don't insult Aurora like that!” she spat, but Alex bowed his head again and he ran away from her and back to the lobby. She fumed at him even though he couldn't see her. How could he compare her to Aurora! But at the same time, as she stood there on the grass with her hands down by her waist, she couldn't help but wonder exactly what he meant by that.

She had gone off with Joey and left Alex at the train station, right within range of those Soviet soldiers.

She did.

But he had no right to say that about Aurora, even after everything she had done in the past year.

But his tears told her a different story. He wept at the very notion itself. Joey had already gone back to his room as well. She fetched up a sigh.

She had dinner with Joey but she wasn't in any mood to be with him after the fact. The day was about Alex, and she had been caught up in her own unfinished business all the while.

“I might just go to bed early, babe,” she told him as Joey walked her back to the room. “I have a headache. You know, with all the traveling and whatnot.”

“Oh, of course,” he replied, still with a thoughtful look on his face. “Besides, we're supposed to be back in our rooms at eleven, and here it is ten thirty.” Before she reached into her pocket for the room key, Joey leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on her lips. A feeling that she had missed.

It felt so long ago, and yet it was all within her hands right there.

“I love you,” he whispered into her mouth.

“I love you more,” she retorted, and he chuckled at that.

“You have a good night,” he whispered again, and he gave her another kiss before she unlocked the door and headed inside. She set down her purse on the table: Chuck and Tiffany had gone out again, and Greg was nowhere to be seen, but Alex had already crawled into bed. The bed sheet hugged his slender body so she kept her eye on the smooth curvature while she changed her clothes right there next to the bed.

She rounded the foot of the bed so she could look into his slumbering face. But he rolled over before she could so much as peel back the covers; he breathed hard and heavy as she crawled underneath the bed sheet next to him.

“Alex—” she whispered.

But he never acknowledged back to her. Joey was in fact her boyfriend, but at the same time, she had left him there at the train station. He sniffled and she knew that he was crying again.

“Alex, listen,” she started right into his ear. “I'm terribly sorry about earlier. I know you're hurt and I hope you can forgive me. But as I've said, Joey is my boyfriend. I couldn't help it. I hope you can forgive not just me but the both of us. You also had no right to insult Aurora like that. Yeah, she's been a complete egotistical bitch since she got married, but I still consider her a friend.”

But he was silent still. She sighed through her nose and she lay back down in the bed with her arms folded across her chest as she awaited for Greg to rejoin them. The whole incident left her divided. Too divided to think things over and too tired to even consider the very suggestion itself.

But she managed to fall asleep before she got to see him walk through that door, and she awoke by the time he had climbed into bed next to her.

Alex was sound asleep himself. They had trapped her in bed, but she could slide down the bed to the foot. Careful not to wake either of them, she sank underneath the covers and she inched to the foot of the bed. She slithered out from under the covers and onto the floor.

There was one guy she could talk to about all of this as she swiped the key card to the room before she crept out to the hallway. She squinted her eyes against the low lights upon the ceiling. Held low against the black night outside there.

She adjusted the straps of her camisole before she closed the door behind her. All alone in the hallway there, she continued on towards the very end. Every time she blinked her eyes, there was that image of Alex crying. She couldn't shake the image from her mind. She had been a friend to him this whole entire time. She thought about what she had said about Aurora earlier as well. Still a friend, but she hadn't been one to her in almost a year at that point. He had more of an upper hand over that.

One other guy she knew she could visit, even when the going got tough overseas, right down the hall from them.

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years ago

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Eccentricity [Chapter 4: Baby, It’s A Violent World]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: Life In Technicolor ii by Coldplay.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to violence.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Tagging: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @killer-queen-xo @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! 💜

Meet The (Not Actual) Parents

I was sinking.

The cold Pacific currents gripped my ankles and dragged me down. Bubbling water rushed through the spaces between my fingers like hurricane winds. I only know what hurricanes look like because of the news, of course, because I’d watched palm trees and houses and lives ripped to pieces and waves flooding highways on CNN as I sat cross-legged on Renee’s plaid thrift store couch with a bowl of black raspberry ice cream in my lap, feeling fascinated and sad and strangely guilty that I’d inherited an arid existence from that fateful genetic lottery. When you’ve grown up in Arizona, hurricanes are like the storms that scientists swear exist on Jupiter and Neptune; they’re real, sure, but they play by the rules of a different world’s physics.

That’s why I’ve always liked the ocean, I guess. Why I want to spend my life studying it. The ocean is another planet, like Mercury or Mars, like Arizona is to Forks. There are species there that haven’t evolved since dinosaurs were drowning in swamps in New England, since before there were any dinosaurs at all, since the Earth was a hellscape of lava and ice. There is bloodshed and crushing pressure and omnipresent, insurmountable darkness. And we’ll never understand all of it. In the six thousand years—a relative few ticks of the watch—that humanity has graced the cosmos with our presence, we’ve explored approximately five percent of the ocean. Five percent, can you believe that? We have better maps of the moon than we have of the ocean floor. And we still dare to call the ocean our own, give it names, pour our plastic and poisons into it, devour its children, paint murky watercolor portraits of it and hang them above our living room sofas. The truth is, the ocean’s not ours. It’s never been ours. It’s another universe that just happens to live where our shorelines end.

My bare feet strike mire and silt. A churning fog of sediment older than the pyramids rolls over me like a quilt, like storm clouds. And there are shadows shifting out there in the darkness, oh yes; there are fangs and glinting eyes that have seen millennia.

My own eyes opened slowly, groggily. Above me was a latticework of branches and pine needles and the soft late-afternoon cries of thrushes and chickadees.

Right. Duh. I’m not in the ocean. I’m in the woods outside Calawah University.

“Owwwww,” I groaned, sitting upright, my hand pressed to a pounding ache in my forehead. When I pulled my palm away, it was stained with rust-colored blood.

Ben, I thought suddenly. Where’s Ben?

“Oh thank god,” he hissed, and my bleary gaze followed his voice. He was fifteen or twenty feet away, his back flat against a towering western hemlock tree, one hand clamped over his nose and mouth, the other clutching his phone. His eyes were wide, glistening, burning. “You landed on a rock when you fell. I thought you might have cracked your skull or something.”

“Not to my knowledge.” I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my throbbing forehead. “How long was I out?”

“Just a minute or two. I was about to call Gwil.”

“Aww, you’d care if I was brain damaged? I’m flattered.”

“If something happened to you, they’d all blame me and probably disown me.”

“Oh.” Why is he so far away, so edgy? “And you’re standing all the way over there because...?” And then it hit me. I glanced down at the blood on my palm. I swallowed noisily. “So, uh, Ben, what do immortal, self-healing beings such as yourself eat?”

“You get three guesses.” He took a full water bottle out of his backpack and rolled it over to me, then tossed a travel-sized packet of Kleenex. “Try to clean as much of it off as you can. I’m dying over here.”

I complied, mopping the tacky blood from my forehead and hands. “What do you want me to do with the—?”

“Bury them.”

“Interesting choice.” I shoveled out a six-inch pit with my fingers in the loose damp soil, placed the bloodied tissues inside, and covered them like seeds. Then I turned to Ben.

Vampire. He’s a vampire. They all are.

That wasn’t possible.

But it’s true.

“You don’t want to kill me,” I said quietly.

“I do not.”

“Why?”

Ben smirked. “Because it’s morally reprehensible.” But he sounded like he was mocking it, like he was parroting someone else’s words.

“But it’s difficult for you. Not to kill me, I mean. To even be nice to me.”

“I’m out of practice,” he said matter-of-factly.

“What, not eating people?”

He nodded. Then he gestured to my forehead. “Gwil should really take a look at that. There’s dirt and stuff in it, you could get an infection. It could scar.”

“I think I’ll decline getting my bloody injury examined by someone who happens to drink people’s blood, thanks.”

Ben chuckled, as if the idea of Dr. Gwilym Lee posing a threat to anyone was as preposterous as flying pigs, a drought in Forks, a monsoon in Arizona, life on Mars. “Gwil isn’t like me. None of the others are like me.”

“What makes you so different?”

“That’s a long story.”

“I’ve got nowhere to be. I already skipped Marine Mammals.”

“Great, then you’re available to have Gwil clean out your disgusting forehead gash.”

I glared at him. Ben glared back; but he was smiling a little too. Just barely. If he was going to kill me, he would have done it already. He would have done it here. “Fine.” I staggered gracelessly to my feet. Ben maintained his distance. “And my forehead gash is not disgusting. Don’t lie. You know you want to lick me like a SpongeBob popsicle.”

“Stop,” he begged, pained. And then he started back towards campus.

I followed after Ben, never closer than a few yards from him; he moved swiftly, effortlessly, agilely over the stones and gnarled roots and felled tree trunks. My head was still swimming, dull pulsating pain periodically interrupting my thoughts like a foghorn. Each time I fell behind or stumbled over an inopportunely protruding rock, Ben stopped to wait for me, his fists in his pockets, his face somber. Before we left the shade of the forest and stepped out into the jarring Forks sunshine, Ben slid on his sunglasses, looking very much like the latest incarnation of James Bond or a MVP football player or someone you would see on the cover of GQ.

Joe was right, I thought, dazed. Supermodel genes indeed.

I pointed to his sunglasses as we strode towards the parking lot, side by side now. Calawah University students dashed by carrying gym bags, armfuls of textbooks, essays and lab reports fresh off the library printers. “You don’t like the sun,” I noted.

He nodded, taking a drag off his vape pen.

“But you don’t burst into flames, evidently.”

“We have extremely good eyesight. A little too good. Perfect night vision, but we’re virtually blind in direct sunlight.”

“And that’s why you live in Washington State.”

“Washington, Alaska, Iceland, Russia, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Norway...anywhere that’s overcast and dreary most of the year.”

“What else?”

Ben furrowed his brow at me. “Huh?”

“What else can you do?”

“You have a lot of questions,” he snapped disapprovingly.

“You would too if you just found out that...uh...well, you know. If you just found out what I found out.”

I paused beside my 1999 Honda Accord. Ben appraised it skeptically. “You drive this?”

“Did cars even exist in 1916?”

“They existed,” Ben replied, glowering.

“What, like the Model T? Horse-drawn carriages don’t count, grandpa.”

“You’re very combative for someone who is so obviously breakable.” Ben signaled to my forehead. “You can’t drive anyway. You could be concussed and black out behind the wheel and drive into a tree and then I’d have to live with the guilt for the rest of my immeasurable years. Just kidding. I would not feel guilty at all. I would however be homeless, which is not my preference.”

“So...you’re going to drive me?”

“Sure.”

I hesitated, glancing at my dull, scratched, dented, olive green Honda. It’s old and unattractive, true, but it was Charlie’s car for decades before he handed it down to me, and I had more memories than I could ever count of nibbling on potato chips I found crumbed between the seats, being enchanted by the multicolored wax shower in the downtown carwash, Charlie checking to make sure my seatbelt was buckled, rolling through the McDonald’s drive thru for midnight caramel sundaes.

Ben narrowed his evergreen eyes at me. “You’ll hang out with me alone in the woods, but a fifteen minute drive is too terrifying?” He’s flippant, but maybe he’s just the tiniest bit disappointed too, a bit hurt. He might be a literal monster, but he’s no demon. Whether he thinks he is or not.

“I don’t want to leave the Honda here overnight. I don’t have a residential permit and I’m worried they’ll tow it. Or worse, they’ll call my dad to tow it.”

“Someone will come back for it later,” Ben promised. “Someone will bring you back, or we’ll drive it home for you.”

“Okay. Fine. We’ll take your Model T.”

Benjamin Lee did not, in fact, drive a Model T. He led me to a rageful red Aston Martin Vantage, a car I only recognized from the magazines that Charlie left scattered around the house, littering the dining room table and kitchen counters and old fraying couches.

“Are you joking?” I asked Ben.

“I have no sense of humor whatsoever.” He ducked inside. I climbed tentatively into the passenger’s seat, paranoid that I would break something, a door handle or cupholder or mirror; Ben immediately rolled open the windows and sunroof. As we whipped out of the parking lot, Ben dialed a number and flung his iPhone onto the dashboard. It rang twice before Dr. Gwilym Lee picked up.

“Hello?” His voice was pleasant and eruditious, even through the speakerphone.

“Hey Gwil—”

“Please, son, call me Dad!” Gwil insisted.

“Uh, okay, well, Dad,” Ben managed with some difficulty. “Uhhhhh, so there was a small incident—”

“Oh god, Benjamin, what happened?”

“No no no, nothing like that, everyone’s fine. You remember Chief Swan’s daughter? The one in my Chemistry class?”

“Yeah...” Gwil agreed cautiously.

“Well she fell and hit her head and I thought you should take a look at it. It’s not serious, but it might need a few stitches. I was sort of responsible for the circumstances so I want to make sure she’s taken care of. We’ll arrive in about ten minutes.”

“Alright,” Gwil said uncertainly, anxiously. “You’re bringing her...to the house?”

“Yes. And she knows, Gwil. Uh, Dad.”

“Knows...?”

“About everything.”

There was a fraught silence on the other end of the line. “Okay,” Gwil said at last. And then, more brightly: “How exciting! I’ll let everyone know. Mom’s working on dinner right now, maybe Miss Swan can join us!”

“Maybe,” Ben replied. “Alright, see you soon.”

“Bye, son.” Just before Gwil hung up, I heard him shout to someone in the Lee house: “Hey honey, great news, we’ll have a guest for dinner...!”

I turned to Ben. “It’s not a big deal for you to tell me? About the vampire thing?”

He shrugged, palpably cagey. “It’s...ahh...not that big of a deal. There are people who know about us. Not a lot of people, but some. And Gwil has been hoping to meet you for a while. They all have.”

“Me? Why me?” What could possibly be interesting about me? “Is it because of Charlie’s bowling league?”

“No,” Ben said, amused. “It’ll be easier to explain when we get there.”

We drove shrouded in a stilted quietness, wind lashing through the Vantage, pine trees that touched the clear blue sky zooming by in a blur. My head still ached, but more than that it roiled like the waves of the Pacific Ocean. I died at Verdun, Ben had told me. I couldn’t recall much of what I’d learned about World War I in high school, but what I did remember was horrific: trenches and blood, mustard gas, artillery shells, shrapnel that ripped away eyes and noses and jaws, men screaming as they drowned in craters of mud and gore.

Ben peered over at me. “What are you feeling? I can’t read you. You have to tell me what you’re feeling if you want me to know.”

Well obviously I have to tell you. You aren’t the Long Island fucking Medium, Ben.

“What was it like?” I asked softly. “Over there, I mean. During the war.”

“I try not to think about it.”

“Oh.” Now I felt bad, like I’d been disrespectful, like I’d wounded him. He’s so different than the others, so different than Joe. So much sadder. “What was your name? Your real name. Before you were a Lee. If you’re really a Lee at all.”

Ben smiles faintly, wistfully. His smile is beautiful; it’s a shame he does it so rarely. “Yes, everyone calls us the Lee kids, but Gwil’s the only real Lee. I was born Benjamin August Hardy in Dorset, England. November 3rd, 1893.”

“A Scorpio!” I exclaimed before I could stop myself.

“Sure,” he replied, bewildered.

“No wonder you’re so mysterious and temperamental. Now it all makes sense. I’m a Scorpio too.”

“You’re certainly mysterious,” Ben muttered.

“Someone turned you, right? To make you the way you are.” To make you a vampire. “Was it Gwil?”

“No,” Ben said flatly. The Vantage turned down a winding cobblestone driveway that led through a sea of dense Douglas firs; I imagined moose and beavers nosing through the branches like crabs creeping along the ocean floor. Tucked away in a haven of shade was a brick house, massive and old and grown over with lush emerald ivy. Ben wheeled his Vantage into the circle at the end of the driveway and was out of the car before I heard the ignition shut off. I reached for my door handle. My hands were trembling.

Okay. Showtime. Let’s go meet some vampires.

I pushed open the passenger’s side door and trailed after Ben.

Joe was waiting for us on the white wrap-around porch, pacing, his eyes shielded by sunglasses in the harsh amber light of the setting sun and hands buried in the pouch of his sweatshirt which advertised an apparently undying love for—what else?—the University of Chicago. A grin lit up his face as I ascended the steps. He held out his hand for me to shake, as if we’d never met before; and, truthfully, in a way we hadn’t. I took his hand, which was smooth and strong and self-assured.

“Joseph Francis Mazzello. Murdered by the mafia in 1928.”

Ben groaned. “You couldn’t act normal? For thirty fucking seconds?”

“I don’t get to tell a lot of people, Ben! This is a big day for me!” Joe’s brow crinkled as he noticed my forehead. “Yikes. Gwil should definitely take a look at that.”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re here,” Ben replied irritably.

I pointed at Joe’s U Chicago sweatshirt. This one was green, like pine trees, like ivy, like the cacti of the Arizona desert. “How many of those do you own?”

“One can never have too many pieces of apparel for an institution they don’t attend, Baby Swan.”

“That’s it. Prepare to get murdered for the second time.”

Joe laughed and opened the front door, which was painted a rich and sophisticated maroon. “Come on. They’re all waiting.”

“Is it...” I instinctively reached for Joe, caught the sleeve of his sweatshirt, felt a cold sweat flare up on the small of my back. This is real. This is possible. They’re vampires. They could be killers if they wanted to be. “I mean, it’s safe, right...?”

“Hey.” He whirled to me and rested his hands on my shoulders. His voice was immediately sincere, quiet, reassuring. Oh, he’s still my favorite Lee. My favorite Lee by quite a lot, actually. Interesting. “We’re monsters but we’re not monsters, you know? No one’s going to hurt you.” But his eyes darted to Ben when he said that, didn’t they? “Gwil already texted Chief Swan to let him know you’re staying for dinner. And I’m sure people noticed you and Ben zooming through town in his super subtle Vantage. People know you’re here. We’d be the most incompetent murderers ever if our plan was to turn you into dinner. And if it makes you feel any better, you don’t have to leave my spindly annoying side all night. Okay?”

Why do I trust him? Why am I smiling?

Who the hell knows, but that’s the way it was. “Okay,” I agreed softly. And Joe led me inside.

The Lee house wasn’t gloomy or dungeon-like or unnerving in any way that the lair of vampires probably should be; there were no cobwebs, coffins, Medieval torture devices, dusty and ominous portraits adorning dark walls. Instead, the house was warm: open layout, cherrywood floors, classic vintage furniture in shades of red and orange and brass and brown, a virtual fireplace roaring on the big-screen tv in the living room, landscape paintings and family photos hung everywhere, those cozy kitchen sounds of knives clicking against cutting boards and running water and the clanging of pots and pans. The windows were all frosted—and etched with patterns like leaves, antlers, diamonds, hearts, trellises—to obscure the sunlight, but enough filtered through to keep the house relatively bright. Various Lees shuttled between the kitchen and the dining room, ferrying plates and silverware. 99 Luftballons was floating spritely from a speaker system somewhere.

“Hello, my dear!” a woman who could only be Mercy chimed as she glided out of the kitchen. She was short and plump and gorgeous and had high, full cheeks that I suspected would have been ruddy if she were still alive. Her hair, the color of milk chocolate or the crust on homemade bread, was secured in a messy bun. Mercy wrapped me in a hug, her flowing floral dress billowing around me. She smelled like roses and vanilla, like a cottage in the wilderness that sheltered you from all the world’s many imperfections. “It’s so lovely to meet you. I’m Mercy but you can call me Mom, everyone does, and please, make yourself right at home...” Her eyes—soft and umber, just like her hair—flicked up to my forehead. “Oh my heavens, Gwilym, will you come over here and tend to this poor girl?”

Rami appeared, cupped my cheeks with his olive hands, and peered piercingly into my eyes.

“Um, hi...?” I ventured.

“Fascinating,” Rami breathed with a grin. “Nothing. Not a whisper. Complete silence.”

“Will you please locate your manners?” Mercy said, exasperated.

Rami stepped back, still shaking his head in awe and disbelief. “Incredible.”

I looked to Joe, not understanding. “Rami can read minds,” Joe explained casually. “All minds. Every mind of every person, dead or alive, that he’s ever met. Except yours.”

“Really?” I gasped.

“Yeah.” Joe nodded to Ben. “And he can see auras, read people’s emotions. Tell what they’re feeling. But not you. You’re a blank freaking slate.”

“Just spill all the secrets,” Ben quipped sardonically.

So that’s why they wanted to meet me. That’s what makes me so interesting.

“And what can you do?” I asked Joe, almost timidly. Please don’t say something like ‘oh I can tell when someone has an embarrassingly massive crush on me, and babe you’re lit up like the fucking Space Needle.’

“Oh, me? Nothing. No exceptional talents whatsoever. I’m utterly useless.”

“You are not!” Mercy cried. “You are a charming, hilarious, loving, loyal, wonderful young man.”

“Thanks Mom,” Joe said.

“And he’s the fastest,” Rami added. “Although not the smartest.”

“All of my children are brilliantly smart, I’ll have you know.” Dr. Gwilym Lee sailed to my side with a dishtowel strewn over one shoulder. He was taller than I remembered from the few times I had spied him around town, more striking, his beard neatly trimmed and his skin scented with something rustic, like sandalwood or a campfire or a log cabin. Jesus christ, do they all have their own patented fragrances like goddamn Bath & Body Works candles? “May I, love?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He tilted back my head gingerly, examining the gash in my forehead near the hairline, humming along to 99 Luftballons.

“You have great taste in music,” I commented politely.

Gwil chuckled. “I’ve been around for quite a lot of musical eras, but the 1980s were the best.” He glanced at Ben approvingly. “Well done, son. It’s a two or three stitches job. Nothing too drastic, but important to get right nonetheless. We wouldn’t want it to scar. If you’ll come to my office, love, I’ll have you fixed up in fifteen minutes. I imagine it stings a bit too, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” I admitted.

“She had a headache and was all wobbly when she woke up,” Ben said.

“Ah. We’ll do a concussion test too then.” Gwil spun to Mercy. “You’ve got everything handled in the kitchen, right darling?”

“Yes, of course...oh, I have to check the pie!” She raced away, moving like they all did, in a fluid and uninterrupted motion like the wind or the tides or the hurtling of a comet through space.

“Want me to come along?” Joe asked me. “You know. To distract you. With my ridiculously obnoxious nature.”

“That would be great. Maybe obnoxiousness could be your superpower.”

Gwil’s office was upstairs and appeared to be straight out of the 1960s, all leather upholstery and dark woods and vintage desk lamps. He opened a medical kit, gave me a pill, determined I was thoroughly non-concussed, numbed my forehead with shots of lidocaine, cleaned out the cut, and began to stitch hastily. I closed my eyes as Joe perched beside me on the couch, the precise opposite of obnoxious; I wasn’t squeamish by nature—I had dissected my fair share of frogs and fetal sharks—but I didn’t enjoy the vision of my flesh being sewn back together like ripped jeans.

“Do you mind if I ask what happened?” Gwil said, his tone measured but concerned.

“Of course not. I confronted Ben about the newspaper article...I found this picture from 1979 and Ben was in the background, looking just as broody and supermodel-ish as he does today...and he tried to deny it. But I already suspected something, I don’t know how to explain it, I just felt it. I knew he was different. That you all were. And I wouldn’t let it go. So Ben eventually showed me...you know...” I waved inarticulately. “What you can do. What you are.”

“Vampires,” Joe clarified.

“Yeah. And I panicked and passed out for like a minute. No big deal. But I landed on a rock, hence the injury. And I suspect Ben could have caught me, but...well, he, uhh...he didn’t seem like he wanted to get too close.”

Gwil nodded as he stitched. “Very smart of him.”

“This doesn’t break some kind of rule?” I asked nervously. “Me knowing about the...vampire thing?”

“Sounds like you’d already figured it out for the most part.” Gwil cut the thread and tied it off. “These are dissolvable, by the way. They’ll be gone in a week. And no, an odd person knowing here and there doesn’t break any rules. Plenty of vampires have human employees or, ah, for lack of a better word, pets.”

“Besides, what are you going to do, run home and tell Chief Swan that you’ve discovered a vampire coven living in quiet, dreary, painfully boring little Forks?” Joe teased. “Sounds like a great plan if you want to end up in a straightjacket.”

“This doesn’t bother you?” I pointed to my forehead. “The blood thing?”

“It doesn’t really bother us,” Gwil said carefully. “If you’ve made it a habit not to feed on people, you stop seeing them as appetizing. Like a human who’s been vegetarian for years. You could throw steaks and chicken fingers at them all day and they’re not going to want to take a bite.”

“Oh, that makes sense. I personally detest chicken fingers.”

“She’s a vegetarian,” Joe told Gwil with a smirk.

“Are you now?”

“Proudly. But you eat actual food...?”

“Purely for enjoyment and for the sense of community. A stubborn holdover from our humanity, and a convenience for you tonight. For strength, for satiation, we need blood. And we only consume animal blood. We’ve only ever killed animals.”

“But Ben isn’t like the rest of the family, uh, I mean, the coven...is he?”

Gwil’s blue eyes shifted to Joe. Joe stared back. “That’s a complicated story,” Gwil said finally. “And one I think I’ll let Benjamin tell you himself when he’s ready.” He stood and washed his long pale hands in the stainless steel sink against the wall. “You’re all finished, Miss Swan.”

Joe pulled me to my feet. “You ready for dinner, kid? You better be. No awful depressing plain spaghetti for you tonight, no ma’am. It’ll be cornbread and mac and cheese until we have to roll you home like a barrel of Prohibition wine.”

“Okay. But I want to hear more about this salacious mafia murder stuff.” He wasn’t lying about being from Chicago. And there was something else, too; Joe wasn’t like Ben, grim and weighed down and haunted by his journey into the life of the undead. He seemed at peace with it. Able to find humor in it. Somehow unmarred by it.

As we left the office, I noticed a colossal painting hanging over Gwil’s desk. There were fifteen or twenty people—vampires, I corrected myself—posed together in what looked like the world’s most awkward class photo. They were all beautiful, severe, innately crafty; there was a stunning woman with silvery hair and furious red eyes (she must have been albino in her human life), a tall broad man with dark skin and chiseled cheekbones (he got the supermodel gene, as Joe would say), a willowy Asian woman with tattoos covering her bare arms, a young man in the center of the group with black hair and golden eyes and sinister charisma that bled through the canvas.

“Who are they? Friends?”

“Not really friends,” Joe said uneasily. “More like family. Very distant, very dysfunctional family. More on that later. For now...” He opened the office door, and a million different blissful, warm aromas flooded in. “It’s dinner time.”

Over an authentic Southern meal covering the vast dining room table—pulled pork, fried chicken, sweet potato casserole, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, coleslaw, red beans and rice, fried green tomatoes, biscuits and cornbread with honey butter, hummingbird cake, and pecan pie—the Lees, all except Ben, shared their stories with me. And there was horror in their stories, I’m sure, but they didn’t talk about those parts; they spoke candidly, nonchalantly, sometimes even nostalgically. They spoke with a brimming sort of enthusiasm that one might have if they’d been anticipating taking their turn in the spotlight for weeks, rehearsing in the bathroom mirror, making a list of bullet points on a post-it note.

They’re almost too open with me, too welcoming. Like they’ve been expecting me all along.

And yet, being with the Lees didn’t feel frightening or suspicious or disconcerting at all.

It feels a lot like home.

“They tied cinderblocks around my ankles and dumped me in the Chicago River,” Joe told me as he gnawed on a chicken wing, bits of crispy breaded skin tumbling down the front of his University of Chicago sweatshirt. “But they slit my throat first. It was a rival gangs situation. They were some of Bugs Morgan’s thugs, I was a Capone guy. Got caught alone when tensions were particularly high, wrong place wrong time, and into the water I went. Fortunately, Gwil saw me go in from the other side of the river. He dove in after me, dragged me out, sank his fangs into my carotid as I bled out on the dock.” He flashed a grin. “And I woke up three days later to this charming existence. It’s freaking fantastic. I could never eat like this if I was human, I’d have developed diabetes decades ago. Doctors would have taken all my toes.”

“Heroin overdose,” Lucille, who insisted I call her Lucy (guess I’m one of her friends now, Jessica will be livid), said with a frivolous flourish of her fine-boned hand. “1969. Times were wild, and I was a bit of a hippie back then. Gwil was the ER doctor on duty that night. Luckiest coincidence of my life.”

“1957,” Scarlett said, tipping a glass of red wine against her full, equally red lips. Her blonde hair fell in chaotic, voluminous waves around her face. “Car accident, terribly mundane. Gwil saw me go off the road. I like the modern day much better than where I came from. Most people don’t think of women as household appliances anymore.”

“But the fashion,” Lucy sighed romantically. Scarlett rolled her spellbinding oil-well eyes.

Rami shared proudly, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms: “Battle of Romani, 1916.”

“No!” Joe interrupted, pointing. “Don’t lie! Don’t act like you were some kind of war hero! You weren’t like Ben, you weren’t in combat.”

“Fine,” Rami amended good-naturedly. “I was working a fishing boat with my father in the Mediterranean and cut my hand on a piece of rusty shrapnel that washed downriver. The wound turned gangrenous, I went insane from the fever, and my father begged every doctor he could find to help me. As it turned out, Dr. Gwilym Lee was the only one with the required skillset.”

“1864, dear,” Mercy told me as she spread honey butter over a crumbly square of cornbread. “During Sherman’s March to the Sea. I was trapped in a barn burned down by Union soldiers. Gwilym was serving as a surgeon with the Army of the Tennessee and deserted to care for me, to...you know...turn me.”

“So you’re pretty old,” I said to Gwil, captivated. This is real, this is real, this is real.

He nodded, slicing himself an enormous sliver of hummingbird cake. “I was gravely wounded during the Battle of Bosworth Field, 1485. Fighting for the Welsh king Henry Tudor. He won, by the way. I ended up attending the coronation.”

“And who turned you?”

But this was something Gwil didn’t want to tell me. He smiled courteously, gestured to the table, urged me to take another plateful of divinely delicious food. Ben kept to himself, didn’t say much, puffed away on his vape pen. Every once in a while Rami would pass him a dish or a bottle of wine, responding to a request no one else could hear.

“It must be difficult for you,” I said to Gwil. “To have the job that you do. To see so many sick and dying people and want to help them all.”

He shrugged, reticent, perhaps secretive. “Well, I suppose you just can’t save everyone.”

After dinner, Mercy packed me two paper bags full of Tupperware leftovers to take home to Charlie. “You tell Chief Swan that he’s welcome for dinner anytime,” she instructed sternly in that homey Southern drawl. “He’s a good man. Gwilym is so very fond of him. And you too of course, dear.” Mercy exchanged a fleeting glance with Lucy. “I hope that you’ll come to visit us again soon.”

Joe drove me back to campus to get my car in his entirely unremarkable Subaru. He didn’t have to roll all his windows down; he didn’t scowl as he stared broodingly out the windshield. He beamed, laughed, chatted easily, quizzed me on random Chicago trivia, asked all about The Walruses And Me: A Transformative Experience.

“You should come over again, Baby Swan,” he said when we pulled up alongside my Honda Accord under the star-filled indigo sky. “We can do a vegetarian dinner next time. And I can introduce you to obscene amounts of classic rock. Make you just as cool as I am.”

“I’d like that. You’re an inspiration to me. I too am only moderately attractive but have a great personality.”

Joe threw back his head and cackled, slapped a palm on his slim, denim-clothed thigh. And I felt blood flush through my cheeks as I wondered what that thigh would feel like under my palm, what his fingers would feel like hooked beneath my jaw. “Jesus christ,” he breathed as he gazed at me with sparkling eyes. “Where the fuck have you been for the past hundred years?”

That night in my bedroom, after Charlie had fallen asleep on the living room couch with crumbs of hummingbird cake tangled in his mustache, I studied myself in my full-length Target mirror. On the upper left-hand corner of the frame was taped Joe Mazzello’s post-it note ticket: Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!! Because I kept it. Of course I fucking kept it.

My eyes traced my reflection, from my ankles to my wrists, from my hips to my belly to my chest to my neck, where an ocean of blood rushed through fragile vessels beneath hot, animate skin. And I realized, smiling, that I liked what I saw.

Maybe I’m not so unworthy after all.

#borhap fic #borhap cast #joe mazzello fic #joe mazzelo x reader #twilight au

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