#when the rhyming happens his face is directed towards mimic

[handfulofmuses]

It feels like while Tumble liked Zavok.....Rough actually kinda appeared to like Mimic?

[prettytoxicrevolver]

The Four Times it Rained with Anthony Beauvillier and The One Time it Didn't

Requested? Absolutely not

Warnings? It's really long with like no dialogue LMAO

Summary: The rain has always brought good things to you and Tito but what happens when it's actually sunny out?

Word Count: 4k

It's really mf long but I promise it's worth it and I'm super proud of it so enjoy! :)

One

When you awoke to the sound of rain pounding steadily on your rooftop your heart filled with glee like a little kid in a candy store. Nothing made you happier than when it rained outside. You loved having the opportunity to sit inside and work all day with the patter of rain smacking the rooftop.

However, today was even better. You had no work and nowhere to be, your all-time favorite kind of rainy day. You always took these days to finish up your favorite books, watch the movies you’ve been holding off on for ages, revel in the ending of your favorite tv shows that have been put off, order in food, and just enjoy the sound of the rain.

It was a cliche, of course, most of your favorite things typically were. It didn’t make you love them any less, in fact, it made you love them a little more. Thinking about how you and however many other people were absolutely content with the fact that it was pouring outside.

And to make things better? Tito had the day off too.

You were a bit surprised when you woke up to the rain and not your best friend either calling, knocking on the door, or just barging straight in like he owned the place. He practically did, always coming over and spending more time at your apartment than he did his own. He certainly wasn’t unwelcome, you loved every moment you got to spend with the left-wing Islander.

Just as you sit up in bed, running a hand through your hair you hear a knock on the door. Knowing it’s no doubt, Tito, at the source, you shoot him a text telling him to come in using his spare key. You listen to the quiet sounds of the rain against the window as your best friend lets himself inside your apartment.

You fall back in bed, pulling the blankets up to your chin, and snuggle deep into the warmth. You hear a quiet knock on your bedroom door before Tito lets himself in. Your head turns, a tiny smile at the sight of your best friend and he reflects it. He makes his way over to you, climbing in bed and slipping an arm around your waist. He pulls you into his chest, pressing his face into your hair and you both sigh in content at the feeling.

You try to ignore the way his hands feel like fire against your skin and how your heart’s steady tempo has slowly increased at the mere thought of him. Gentle warmth floods your body when Tito presses a kiss to the back of your neck, the action causing your heart to act as an elevator, rising and falling without rhyme or reason.

You both fall asleep for a while, the rain lulling you into a tired state and soaking up the rest you both had been sorely lacking after your busy weeks. You awoke for the second time that day to Tito’s hands lazily tracing patterns on your arms.

“Hi,” you murmur, turning in his embrace.

“Hey,” he greets back his tiny smile growing wider. “Wanna watch a movie or something?”

“Getting bored laying here?” you ask.

“Never,” he says, throwing a wink at you that has your stomach doing backflips.

Tito has to turn away from you as his cheeks burn red at your sleep-ridden state. His heart mimics the rain outside a steady patter fast against the rooftop just like his heart against his ribcage. He stands, holding a hand out to you which you take and you let him pull you up and out of bed, leading you towards the living room.

You both fall onto the couch, Tito pulls your legs over his and slips an arm back around your waist. He hated being away from your touch for too long. Your head falls comfortable onto his chest and you’re certain your eyes may flutter shut once more.

Tito peruses the movies before him and ultimately decides on a random marvel one that he’s never seen before but you most definitely have. He watches as your eyes light up at the sight of your favorite superhero on screen, and you launch into the explanation of the plot for him.

He can barely focus, only thinking about how easy it would be to release the three simple words that would change everything. Or press a kiss to your soft-looking lips in an attempt to hush you so he can actually watch and listen to the movie. Unfortunately fear captures his heart a little tighter than the love he has for you.

You turn back to look at your best friend, expecting at least a hum in response, and when you notice his eyes have been on you the entire explanation your cheeks flush. You wondered what he was thinking about, and hoped it was the same thing you were.

“You okay?” you ask, pulling him back to reality.

“Yeah,” he reassures. “All good.”

You nod, a tiny smile on your lips as you look back at the TV. Tito tries to focus for you but he can only think about how much he loves you.

Two

It was a bad habit for you to leave all of your shopping to one day a week. You always ended up running out of something you desperately needed but were too lazy to go out and buy.

However, today seemed to be turning out equal parts bad and equal parts good. The good thing was that you were able to convince Tito to come with you shopping and carry some (he would argue most) of your groceries home. The somewhat bad? It looked like it might rain.

You tried to make your way through the store as quickly as possible, the impending storm looming in the back of your head as you shop. However, your best friend is of no help to you.

"Tito" you call for the billionth time. "Put it back."

The older boy pouts, reaching into your cart to pull out the fruit snacks he just threw in. You smile widely at him, and before you can move the cart once more, Tito climbs onto the front of it.

“Onward!” he yells pointing in the opposite direction and you giggle while pushing the cart slowly along as to not hit anyone or anything.

The rest of the shopping goes just as smoothly, your heart filling up with air similar to a balloon that doesn’t know when it’s going to pop. Sometimes looking at your best friend was too much and you became scared you’d let the feelings spill out all over the floor.

Tito would do anything to see you smile or laugh. It was nothing short of embarrassing himself or nearly killing himself in the middle of a grocery store aisle where he could easily be recognized in the small area of Long Island. As long as your head was thrown back in laughter, a wide smile stretched across your lips, and the promise of a sometimes yelled “Tito!” or “beau!” expelled from you was there, it was worth it.

After checking out, you two split up the bags and start to make the trek back to your apartment. You were beyond glad you had brought Tito along with you, making the trip much easier on you and providing plenty of entertainment along the way. As you walk, the clouds start to rumble and you cast a nervous glance over to the tall brunette. Tito grins back at you, just enjoying your presence, not a care for the impending weather.

A crack of thunder rolls in causing you to jump and pick up your speed. You were about two blocks from your house but the world had other plans for you. Just as you were rounding a block away, it starts to pour.

“Fuck!” you yell pausing in the street.

You look over and Tito is grinning like a maniac, the smile on his lips shooting straight to your heart. You can’t help but reflect it, he looks beautiful rain-soaked and his blue eyes lit up at the wonder of it all.

Tito had always been grateful for the rain. It had always brought good things to him and the world. Right now it easily brought him his favorite thing he’s ever witnessed. Your hair is soaked, plastering messily against your face as you whip around to look at him. A smile bigger than he had ever seen sits perfectly on your lips and that sound that he loves more than anything in the world is there, the laugh that makes his heart rise to the top of the empire state building and teeter over the side with nerves.

God, he loved you.

Without a second thought, he intertwines your hands, grabbing your bags out of your other hand and hauling them into his own. He starts tugging you along, trying to push down the fact that your hands feel like they’re made specifically for him and that he never wants to let go.

You make it back to your apartment, your heart pounding for a different reason for once. When you get inside, Tito drops the groceries by the door and you both turn to each other still giggling quietly. Tito’s hand is still interlocked with yours, his calluses rubbing against your palm and sending shockwaves through your veins.

He pulls you in, his other hand coming to wrap around your waist. Your soaked bodies inch closer until they’re flush and you’re staring into his mesmerizing blue eyes. Your free hand wraps around the back of his neck, your fingers trailing the buzz-cut hair on the back of his neck.

Tito was pretty sure you might be the death of him. Looking down at your soaked state, peering up at him and the movement of your hands, he’s surprised his heart hadn’t stopped yet. He wants to lean down, finally meet his lips to yours, and fall headfirst into a relationship with you without considering any of the consequences.

You were hoping that one of you was finally going to build the nerve to change everything. Your heart is tipping on the edge of wishing and hoping. Just as your noses brush, a loud crack of thunder sounds, and you both jump, the possibility scaring you along with the noise.

Three

Today was not turning out to be a good day. Besides the prospect of rain later, you had barely gotten any work done, your finals were coming up soon, and you hadn’t seen Tito in weeks.

So the last one is slightly exaggerated. You had seen Tito, mostly through facetime calls and the occasional quick stop by but he was mostly on the road and you were sorely missing your best friend. You’d kill to have him here, even if it was for longer than an hour, you’d do anything to have him next to you.

You knew it was somewhat selfish, but you needed him here. Needed his encouraging words, his soft touches, his sweet smiles, just his presence. You knew his schedule though, understood his job and what came with it and you knew he’d never trade it for the world, you never wanted him to.

Tito was homesick. Not particularly for his apartment, or even the island itself, he was desperate to see you. He missed your laugh, and holding your hand, cuddling together late at night, waking up early to your sleeping state, forehead kisses, and his favorite: your laugh. He was desperate for it, the physical version of it.

However, when he heard the Isles were headed home for a quick weekend stint he knew he wasn’t close to heading back to his apartment. He headed straight towards you, his other half even if it was unbeknownst to you. He had decided a while ago that even if you never reciprocate his feelings, you were still his twin flame, his platonic soulmate forever and always.

He headed to your apartment with excitement, checking your location on his phone to see that you were there. In the cab on the way, it starts to rain and Tito can’t help but smile. He had always loved the rain but he was almost certain it had slowly started to become a beacon of good things especially surrounding you.

A wave of calm flows through him when he reaches your front door, he feels like a little kid receiving the Christmas present that they had been asking for all year. He hadn’t even seen you yet and the thought occurs to him that he always wants to come home to you after long weeks away.

You sit in your apartment, flipping aimlessly through your textbook in an attempt to get some work done. The rain plinks softly against your apartment window and the noise soothes you as you try to focus. However, just as you start to, a knock on your door sounds. You’re wary at first but make your way over to it swinging it open without a second thought.

“Anthony-” you breath out, your best friend’s first name foreign on your tongue.

Tito barges in, wrapping his arms around your waist and you instantly slip yours around his neck. You relish in the feeling of him being here and back in your arms. You almost let out a whine when he pulls away from you but his hands trail from your waist to your hands and interlock them.

“Come on,” he says with a mischievous smile on his lips.

“Where-” you start but Tito shakes his head, pulling you out of the apartment and dragging you along.

You’re so caught up in the fact that Tito is here, and his hand has slipped back into yours that all you can do is take in his appearance. Whenever he’s gone for a long time he always seems different but more and more like home to you. When he comes back it’s like your last puzzle piece is put in place and you’re whole again.

You both make your way down the floors of your apartment building until you’re outside. Tito lets go of your hand, stepping out onto the sidewalk and letting the rain fall over him. You watch as a loving smile falls onto your lips, the rain cascades over him, his hair falling flat against his forehead, and an unknowing smile pressed on his face.

“Come here,” he tells you and at first you shake your head no.

Beau was definitely not taking that answer today. He makes his way over to you, slipping an arm around your waist and lifting you into his arms and out into the rain. You shriek as the cold raindrops fall over you and you tuck your face into Tito’s neck.

He sets you down but doesn’t let go, his hand still circling your waist. He nudges your arms until they slide around his neck again, your fingers interlocking at the nape. He grins wildly down at you and your heart fills and fills at the sight. He slowly sways the two of you back and forth, dancing to music only known between you two.

“I missed you,” he says after a few quiet beats.

“I missed you too beau.”

Your swaying moves to a dull rocking back and forth, the two of you focused more on each other than anything else in the world. Neither of you realized it, but when the other was around the whole world seemed to fall away in an instant. There was no use trying to get between the two of you.

Beau leans down, your foreheads bumping lightly and your breath shortens at the proximity of the two of you. He leans forward, his nose brushing yours and for once you’re begging for his lips to meet yours, not caring about what might change between the two of you after.

“Hey! Get out of the street!”

You and Tito pull apart heads whipping in the direction of a car driving right at you. You both laugh at the ridiculousness of it all before heading back inside, the rain only picking up harder.

Four

“One more exam. Just one more final exam.”

You chanted the words over and over again in your head hoping they would somehow motivate you into finishing your work and studying for the last exam you had for the school year. You even went as far as going to the library, deciding to hole yourself up there the entire day to try and get something done.

Tito would text you occasionally, mostly offering words of encouragement as you worked and every time your phone buzzed an unconscious smile reached your lips. Tito had always been your cheerleader and vice versa. You were always there for each other and pushing each other forward whenever you needed it.

Your corner of the library was cozy, you sat, your legs tucked up in the loveseat next to the window. The rain fell slowly down the side of the building and you watched two raindrops drip down, an unknown race there.

Your eyes fall back to the textbook in front of you, flipping through the pages trying to absorb more information than you already have all day. As you work, suddenly a hand appears in front of you, a cup of coffee being placed down on the table in front of you. Your eyes trail up and you find a grinning Tito standing before you.

“Thought you might need an energy boost,” he says sitting down in front of you.

Your heart practically bursts at the sight. Tito had known you hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep recently and was worried about you. However, he also knew you were easily the most stubborn person in his life. If he couldn’t beat you, he might as well support your caffeine addiction in hopes that by the end of finals you’ll finally get some rest.

“Have I mentioned recently you’re my favorite person in the world?”

Tito grins dropping his head down shyly and you take the opportunity to grab the coffee and take a sip of it. You hum at the taste, a soft smile appearing on your lips when you realize that Tito has memorized your coffee order, something no one else has had the energy to do.

“I also wanted to make sure you get home okay,” he says nodding to the ever-growing rainstorm outside.

Your whole body warms at the words, a blush dusting your cheeks. Tito was nothing if not a gentleman and every time a display like this showed, your heart fell further and further into his hands. You place the cup down in front of you, leaning forward to place a hand on Tito’s knee.

“Thank you, darling,” you say and you swear you see a blush on Tito’s cheeks.

Your eyes search his as the only noise in the library is the sound of the rain against the building and the soft sounds of the workers meandering around. You swear gravity pulls you towards each other, Tito’s hand coming up to cup your cheek. His thumb brushes softly against your skin, the contact making your heart freeze and speed up all at once.

“Excuse me loves, the library is closing.”

You and Tito smile and nod at the sweet woman, breaking apart slowly before gathering your things and heading out together.

And One

The sun shines high in the sky, easily one of the nicest days on long island in months. Spring was melting away into summer and the warm air had you dying to get out and visit the ocean even if it was just for a little bit.

While Tito knew of your love for the rain, the breakthrough of sun was welcomed by the two of you. It was unspoken that when the sun had risen, and the temperature broke seventy, you wanted to spend a little time at the beach together.

You disliked the beach normally, not liking the sand that gets everywhere, the obnoxious teens yelling loudly, kids running around without parents, it just bothered you. But you loved the feeling of warm wind running through your hair as you drive, windows down, and the smell of the ocean air.

Tito shows up on your doorstep, and without a word, you two are out the door and heading towards your car. You climb in, hands immediately rolling down your windows and sunroof while Tito picks the music. You had an unspoken communication to go to the beach today and you were beyond excited.

Tito always looked gorgeous to you. In the sun? His blue eyes shine a bit brighter, his smile seeming to reflect the warmth that the sun brought you inside and out. He was breathtaking.

You were a work of art to Tito. Your hair blew back from your face, whipping around the small space. A light smile had been present since he showed up on your doorstep. Your (y/e/c) lit up from the sun and him. From head to toe, he would never grow tired of looking at you.

When you got to the beach, you parked in a spot overlooking the water. The two of you get out of the car, and Tito gestures to the hood. He stands before you, hands placed gently on your hips, and lifts you onto your car with ease, his hockey training coming in handy.

He hops up next to you, settling down on the hood and overlooking the beautiful ocean. His leg touches yours, starting at your feet and following through to your hips. The contact drives you crazy, making it feel like it’s ten degrees hotter as your nerves spike. It’s surprisingly quiet, the ocean rushing in and out before you, a light wind pushing your hair back effortlessly.

Your hands sit in your lap, nervously fiddling together. Tito glances at you constantly, his eyes trailing to your hands and he builds the courage to slip his fingers into yours. At the contact, you squeeze his hand lightly and that gives Tito all he needs.

“Hey,” he says, making you turn to look at him.

His other hand comes up to cup your cheek and you lean into the touch instinctively. His head ducks to meet yours, your noses brushing and your breath catches in your throat. You watch Tito’s eyes flicker back and forth before pushing forward. His lips meet yours and you sigh at the feeling of his lips on yours. Your free hand comes to grip the side of his shirt and pull him as close as possible.

Your breathless the entire kiss, the thought that the older hockey player liking you back finally smacking you full force. His touch lights you up from head to toe and you never want him to break away.

Tito grew more and more confident within the kiss, and his heart continued to balloon in his chest bigger and bigger at your closeness, you were finally right where you were supposed to be.

You pull apart when there’s no breath left in your lungs but stay close. Tito chases your lips pressing another light kiss to them. You giggle at him and he smiles sheepishly, biting his lip slightly and gazing at you with those eyes that had you since you first met. Tito was still on cloud nine at the thought of you loving him back.

“I really really like you,” he whispers and you giggle. He could have said absolutely nothing, he could have kissed you again, or simply kept holding your hand but the words said out loud made your heart do backflips like it was an olympian training for the gold medal.

“I like you too.”

“And I really wanna kiss you again.”

You smile lovingly at him before pressing your lips to his, something that would never fail to make your heart stop.

[abluescarfonwaston]

The Eternal Fire

This is turning into quite the day.

He wanted a new jacket. That's the only reason he'd come to Novigrad. He just wanted a new jacket. It was a very nice jacket. It already had a tear in the sleeve.

"Geralt." Dandelion tugged at it. Worsening the tear. He be annoyed if he weren't so relieved at his return from wherever he'd wandered while they waited. "Where do they keep the money?" He asked. His whinny whisper sounding almost as distressed as Geralt felt.

"In the cellars, perhaps?" He didn't shift as he carefully watched the dwarves and young men continue their work of filling parchment with numbers and figures. It appeared very monotonous but they didn't look up from their papers so it must have been engaging. He still carefully positioned Dandelion in front of his sleeve in case they looked up.

"No Geralt! I looked!" That did explain where he had gone. "There's no cellars here!"

He tugged his medallion grateful for Dandelions panic. It helped keep his own calm. The halfling, Dainty, continued to tap his foot impatiently, ignoring them. "The attic then." He explained. Because that was the other place people kept money. Banks had to be the same.

Dandelion nodded and eased slightly. He let the chain of his medallion go. The urge to fiddle with it passing. If Dandelion believed him then he was likely right. Because Dandelion knew cities and was a very smart man.

A banker waved them into his office. Discussing the financial wonders that the doppler Dudu was making with Danity’s face and income. They spoke quickly, excited and confused in rapidly shifting amounts that he could hardly follow. The figures were far more than he could ever dream of having. He wouldn’t know what to do with figures that large. 

They spoke of tax and debts and profits which was all very boring and rather soured him to the whole affair. He and Dandelion did not have 22 crowns for a new jacket or even one for lunch. Dandelion had instead stolen some fritters from a market stall for them to snack on and they’d made do.

Dandelion appeared to be listening so he stopped attempting to follow them. If it became important Dandelion would be willing to explain after. 

He considered instead the glossy cornflower blue of his clothing. The way it framed his shoulders. They weren’t as wide as his despite the fact Dandelion was somewhat taller than him. He rarely stood up straight, of course, so it was hardly noticeable. There was a small stain near his ankles where the jar of cherry preservatives had splashed him as Vespula had attempted to toss her entire apartment at the troubadour. His blond hair slightly frizzled under his plum bonnet with it ergot feather from the pure chaos of this morning.

His cheeks were full enough that he knew he’d eaten well these past few months. But given how his fiance had thrown him from her home and the barkeep had refused to spot the bard a drink he figured Dandelion’s time in this city was about done.

Dandelion had wished on the carp in the fountain for a proper ending to his song. The rhymes wouldn’t come, he said. Travel. That would help the poet. He always claimed to do his best work by the embers of a dying fire.

He wondered if he would join him. The quiet popping and crackling of the fire painting Dandelion orange as he muttered while the fire died. Sleep found him easier those nights.

“A troubadour, a Witcher and a merchant. Congratulations. Master Dandelion shows up here and there, even at royal courts, and no doubt keeps his ears open.” He focused as the banker mentioned them. “ And the Witcher? A bodyguard? Someone to frighten debtors?”

“Hasty conclusions, Mr. Vivaldi,” He said coldly pulling his name from the plate on his desk. “We are not partners.”

“And I,” Dandelion said, flushing, “Do not eavesdrop anywhere. I’m a poet, not a spy!”

“People say all sorts of things.” The dwarf grimaced. “All sorts of things Master Dandelion.”

“Lies!” The troubadour yelled. “Damned Lies!”

“Very well, I believe you, I believe you.” He raised his hands placatingly. “I just don’t know if Chappelle will believe it.”

Chappelle. The head of the church of the Eternal Fire. That had surrounded them with the temple guard and threatened them should they not leave town after paying the taxes Dainty owed. It seemed that matter had been settled. So they weren’t in overt danger.

The weapons the temple guard had used. They’d filled him with rage. He’d nearly drawn his sword as they surrounded them. Dandelion’s whisper in his ear and shaking hand on his shoulder all that stopped him. “Geralt,” He’d whispered, “By all the Gods, keep calm-”

“I won’t let them touch me,” He’d muttered. “I won’t let them touch me, whoever they are. Be careful Dandelion. When it starts, you two flee, as fast as you can. I’ll keep them busy... for some time.”

Dandelion’s hand on his shoulder was all that kept him from lashing out as the temple guard had inched closer. Surrounding them with their spiked whips that were prohibited in most countries Geralt knew. Novigrad included. He’d seen people struck by them. He would never forget those face.

He shifted in front of Dandelion. His wide shoulders helping shield the bard from them.

Dandelion stepped around him. Shifting his lute on his shoulder. Spoke to the man for them. He did not look away from the weapons in the guards hands.

And then Chappelle had asked to speak with him in private. Those few steps from Dandelion and Danity, still surrounded bubbled the rage under his skin. If he touches me, he’d though, I’ll strike him. If he touches my elbow i’ll strike him, whatever happens.

He hadn’t. Asked instead the price for killing a vexling, a doppler. He’d managed enough politeness to make clear he wouldn’t.

Then he’d suggested the fee for such a service might guarantee he and his friends might leave this city. He’d wavered as Dandelion and Danity shifted nervously in the circle. Surrounded by the spiked whips.

They’d left. Dandelion touched his elbow and guided him from the bank. Towards the market where the doppler impersonating Dandy was.

It was always quite the day when Dandelion was involved. The man was trouble. His brand new jacket already had a tear in the sleeve. His long fingers warmed his elbow as they headed to the Western Market.

He shoved his way through the overly crowded market towards the sounds of Dandelion and his Lute. His voice calling out to the beauties passing by from a fabulously colored stall decorated with the sign: ‘Buy your wonders, amulets and fish bait here’.

“Dandelion!” He said, approaching. “I thought we had split up to search for the doppler. And you’re giving concerts. Aren’t you ashamed to sing at markets like an old beggar?”

“Ashamed?” Came the astonished reply. “What matters is what and how one sings and not where. Besides I’m hungry and the stall-holder promised me lunch. Look for the doppler yourselves, I’m not cut out for chases, brawls or mob law. I’m a poet.”

“You’d be better off not attracting attention, Poet. Your fiancée is here. Could be trouble.” He’d spotted her earlier yelling at a pots and pans merchant.

“Fiancée?” He blinked nervously. Casting his gaze over the crowd. “Which one do you mean? I have several.”

Irritation bubbled up as Vespula appeared welding a copper frying pan, answering his question. Dandelion jumped up from the stall and nimbly darted away. She turned to him. Nostrils flaring and he stepped backwards. His back hitting the stall’s wall. 

Dainty knocked her off balance as he leapt through the crowd, directing him to his double. He took off in pursuit, eager to escape Vespula’s screams that promised she’d show them how well she could wield the frying pan.

The back of his jacket was lashed as he knocked over two baskets of herrings. The other sleeve caught on a fence and tore.

He stopped. Swore. Spat. Swore again.

He’d just wanted a new jacket. Already it was ruined. Not even half a day later.

Dainty rushed into a tent after the doppler. The noise of blows, curing and an awful banging came from inside. He swore obscenely. Gnashed his teeth. Raised his hand and used Aard on the tent. 

It billowed up like a sail in the gale and collapsed. The doppler crawled out on his belly out from under it. Dashed towards a smaller tent. He hit him in the back with a sign. He tumbled forward but tucked into a somersault and rushed into the tent. He followed in. Hot on his heels.

Dudu turned to him. The canvas firmly attached to the ground. No escape besides the entrance he blocked.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you again mimic.” He said coldly. One of his sleeves bunching around his wrist.

He was breathing heavily. Hoarsely. “Leave me alone. Why are you tormenting me?”

“You attacked Danity. Stole his horses and identity. Left him in the woods. And you’re still using his face and causing him problems.” He watched him shift and consider making a break for it. He stayed ready. Knees bent in case he acted on the impulse. “I don’t want to kill you or turn you in but you have to leave the city. I’ll see that you do.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“I will carry you out in a sack on a handcart.”

Dainty’s face twisted in displeasure and then he swelled up abruptly. Became thinner. Taller. Curly chestnut hair growing white, long and straight down to his shoulders. His green waistcoat shone like oil becoming black leather with silver studs. His face elongated and paled. His swords elongating over his shoulders.

“Don’t come closer. I won’t let you touch me. I’ll kill you if you touch me.” He smiled and his gut twisted.

Was that really how horrible his smile looked? It must be. He thought as he reached for his blade. How hideous I look when I squint. That’s what I look like? Damn.

It was a wonder they didn’t charge him more at brothels.

Their fingers both touched the blades at the same time. Sprung from their sheaths in one identical motion. Two simultaneous quick steps. Forward. To the right.

Their swords swung and connected in perfect symmetry.

They froze. Stopped dead.

“You can’t beat me,” he snarled. “Because I am you.”

“You’re wrong, drop the blade and take Dainty’s form again. Else you’ll regret it.”

“I am you.” He repeated but his hand eased off the blade.

“You have no idea what it means to be me, mimic.” He remained focused on his hands. “Because you are a good natured doppler. You could have killed Dainty and buried him. Taken his life in total safety. But you didn’t because you are at your core a good natured doppler whose close friends call him Dudu. You only know how to copy the good in us.”

His hands dropped from the blade and he stepped backwards. Colliding with the tent’s canvas.

“So turn back into Dainty. Let me tie your hands. You can’t defy me because you can’t copy this in me.” The willingness to kill. “You know that. Because for a moment you were me.”

The slight hunch to his shoulders disappeared as he suddenly straightened with a hideous smile. “You’re right Geralt.” His features warped and his hair shortened. Darkening a tone to blonde. His lips changed shape as he spoke making the words indistinct. “I was only you for a moment but it was enough. Do you know what I’m going to do now?”

The oil black of his leather turned into glossy cornflower blue. He smiled, straightening his plum bonnet with its ergot feather. Adjusted the strap of his lute that had just moments before been a sword.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” He said, with the rippling laughter characteristic of Dandelion. “I’m going to walk out of here and you are going to let me. You won’t fight me. Because then you’d have to kill me. And you can’t.”

The doppler stepped forward. He stared not at his hands but his face as they looked at him. He stood straight, in the way Dandelion only ever did when he was trying to impress. To catch someone’s eye.

“I’ll go and quietly transform into any old body. Because that’s better than starving in the wilds. I’ll blend in amongst these people an one will raise a fuss because what is one more person amongst the thirty thousand that already live here?”

Dandelion’s eyes stared down the tiny distance that separated them in height. His hip cocked with his easy smile. He stood right in front of him. His sword, still in hand, hung limply at his side.

“After all. They let the dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and even elves,” his mouth twisting into the insolent smile of Dandelion’s, “the modest possibility of assimilation. So why not me? Why am I any different from the half elves they let wander here? I can look just the same as them. I can do just the same as them. I deserve a chance to live among them.”

He said nothing as one of the Dopplers string calloused hands pressed against his chest. “Yes. As I said. I am going. And you are going to let me. Because for one moment I was you. Because I knew your thoughts Geralt. Including the ones you won’t admit to.” He leaned in and he could smell the fritter on his breath. “The one’s you hide from even yourself.”

He did not move. His heart hammered in his chest under the fingers of Dandelion. The doppler leaned over towards his ear and he watched his lips form words.

“Because to stop me you’d have to kill me. And the thought of killing me in cold blood fills you with disgust. Doesn’t it?”

He leaned back. Adjusting the strap of his lute. Turned away and walked confidently towards the exit.

He moved confidently but his hands shook and back hunched just slightly. Anticipating the whistle of a blade. His jaw trembled just so slightly over the jackrabbit beating of his heart.

Even in fear he mimicked Dandelion perfectly.

He turned to him mid-step at the exit when no blade came. “Thank you Geralt. Farewell.”

“Farewell Dudu.” He replied. “Good luck.”

The doppler turned away and headed into the crowded bazaar with Dandelion’s sprightly, cheerful, swinging gait. He swung his left arm vigorously and he grinned at the women as he passed them.

He set off slowly after him. Slowly.

He seized his lute in full stride and played two chords. Then played a tune he knew. He sang the song Dandelion had been troubling with all day.

His voice exactly like Dandelions. He sang. But the rhymes came to him.

He smiled brightly back at him when he was done. “Pass that on to Dandelion if you remember.” He called back to him through the crowd. “And tell him that Winter is a lousy title. The ballad should be called The Eternal Fire. Farewell Witcher!”

He started to nod when Vespula, launcher of missiles and angry ex-fiancé of Dandelion’s, shouted out “Hey! You, pheasant!”

The doppler turned around in astonishment. He removed his bonnet and bowed with his broad and easy smile. “Vespula my dear! How glad I am to see you.” He shoved and elbowed his way through the crowd desperately towards the poor fool. “Forgive me my sweet. I owe you-“

“Oh you do, you do.” She interrupted. “And what you owe me you’re going to pay!”

The copper frying pan flashed in the sun as it clanged deep and loud against his head. He staggered. An indescribably stupid expression frozen on his face as his arms spread out and he began to melt into nothing human.

He leapt in full flight swiping a blanket from a stall. Wrapping the doppler in it and sat atop the bundle.

Vespula gripped her frying pan. Her fury mixing with confusion.

“He’s sick.” He smiled affectedly. “Don’t crowd. He needs air.”

“Did you hear?” Chappelle asked calmly but resonantly. Pushing his way through the crowd. “Do not form a public gathering here! Please disperse! Public gatherings are forbidden, punishable by a fine!”

In the blink of an eye the crowd dispersed. Dandelion approached them against the movement of the crowd. Vespula cried out when she saw him and with a palid glance at the blanket, ran.

“What happened? Did she see the devil?” The bundle under him began to move weakly. Chappelle slowly approached. His personal guard nowhere to be seen.

“Don’t come closer.” He said quietly. “If I were you I’d turn around and pretend I never saw anything.”

“You, no doubt.” Chappelle said coldly. “But you are not me.”

Dainty ran up behind them but upon seeing Chappelle he stopped. Began to whistle, held his hands behind his back and pretended to admire the roof of the granary.

Chappelle stood by Geralt, very close. He narrowed his eyes. Chappelle leaned over the bundle.

“Dudu” he said to Dandelion’s strangely deformed cordovan boots still sticking out the blanket. “Copy Dainty, quickly now.”

Dainty objected but Dudu, only my friends call me Dudu, began to compress under the blanket and after a few moments he scrambled out.

Dandelion watched the proceedings from perched atop a trunk. Strumming his lute with an expression of moderate interest on his face. From the corner of his eye he could find no fault in the doppler’s impression of him.

“Now who is this?” Chappelle asked Dainty pointedly.

“My cousin. Dudu Biberveldt of Knotgrass Meadow. An astute businessman that. I’ve decided to appoint as my factor in Novigrad.”

“Oh thank you cousin.” His close relative and pride of their clan smiled broadly. Chappelle also smiled.

“What happened to the real Chappelle?” He asked him.

“Died of apoplexy two months back. May the earth lie lightly on him, and may the Eternal Fire light his way. No one noticed. Geralt you aren’t going to-“

“What didn’t anyone notice?” He asked with an inscrutable expression. Dandelion smiled ruefully from his perch.

“Thank you.” Chappelle muttered.

A Gnome arrived, bringing with him another matter of mercantile business.

“Geralt.” Dandelion groaned. “He’s earned more in three days than I’ve earned in my whole life singing!”

“Maybe you should take up commerce then. Perhaps if you ask he’ll take you as an apprentice.”

Dandelion gave a rueful smirk as he strummed his lute with a shake of his head.

“Witcher.” Dudu tugged at his ruined sleeve. “Tell me how I could repay you?”

“Twenty-two crowns.”

“What?”

“For a new Jacket. Look what’s left of mine.”

“Do you know what?” Dandelion suddenly yelled, jumping from his perch. “Let’s all go to the house of ill repute! To Passiflora! The Biberveldts are paying!”

“Do they admit halflings?” Dainty asked with concern.

“Just let them try not to.” Chappelle put on a menacing expression. “Let them try and I’ll accuse their entire bordello of heresy.”

“Right.” Dandelion called, already leading the way. “Very satisfactory. Geralt?” He turned his eyes to him. His face warm and open. Framed by his blond curls. “Are you coming?”

He laughed softly.

“Do you know what Dandelion?” He said. “I’ll come with pleasure.”

[atomkrp-blog]

WELCOME TO XAVIER’S, HWANG MINO !

… loading statistics. currently aged twenty-three, entering first semester of xavier’s in seoul, south korea. decrypting files… mutant has the following records: strength +5, durability +4, agility +7, dexterity +4, intelligence +5. currently, he is classified under tier omega.

BACKGROUND.

           O.

the cartography of his veins spread before his eyes: here, where he bruised in metronomes — here, where he fractured his vertebra — here, where he dissected his laments.

against the riverbed where stories run in rivulets of red, in the stream of incongruence, lies the corpse of a manmade construct. called it death. named it fear. at the end of the day, its soot is ripe and ruined in his fisted palm, leaving inked teeth marks in shades of dying black.

the night sky thinks about a carnage that dreams: in this story, the sequence wears a reverse order.

sometimes, he is a motel with a crooked figured chalked on the creaky floor. all those streaks of blood that they scrub so hard but the wallflowers still remember what they witnessed. all the wallflowers that wilted, when murder sprayed their dormant status with sins. also the bed where he thrashed, all simulated forms of unspoken words transferred into acidic non-verbal. and that bed sheet wearing new colors, the hue melting like waxwork with flames that attracted these fallen, falling moths.

he is also the thump. victim now on the plane; bloodshed is beautiful when you are made of this chaotic smoke, imprisoned by your glass ribcage. quite a vision, quite a beauty.

the wooden boards, the outline. and everything in-between.

                        ( glass of half-full / empty water; tv playing static like sorrow. )

rest with me: i am an aftermath of this death, but i’m not in the coffin.                                                                                   ( i am the coffin. )

             I.

out of soft violence he bloomed: marigold and cinnamon, seeping through the interstices of mama’s cusps. she sighed, milkflower petals of her skin dripping in vigilant white as she shared the space of a husband’s with someone else. he was three, he remembers vividly. other colors of the spectrum spoke on the concave and convex of her features; she splintered in ways that he never understood between the grips of a man that was not his father.

membranes of his unfinished bedtime spillage carved memories like no other. he was supposed to be fast asleep, lost in the depth of cocooned safety in his crib. a watchful, taciturn witness to the event that unfolded before him, he always pretended that this was not the guilt that marred her face years later — that this was not the shame that spun the partiture of her elegies. against the gossamer edge of time, she would always be reminisced, another sway of chandelier against the stark ceiling of their mansion. this was the first beauty that painted the inglenooks of his memories.

first and foremost, insanity is hereditary, and so is sadness.

            II.

the child of threnody did not grow away from his mother; instead, he planted more seeds of lachrymose within the particles of his being, enveloped like chrysalis. the soothsayer across the street on an autumn day whispered to him little pieces of how to build a temple with his body, column per column, until he reached the sky shaped out of weary cultures and faded nebulas. spinal pillars stood against the horizon; he became acquainted with the after dark lullabies that ate away at his father’s core.

the difference was that his father was rotten with penumbra, while he soaked himself up in the act of liminal drowning. the similarity was that they both were too lost to be salvaged, feet tangled around the anchors.

he learned to love his mother in ways that she haunted his bones.

            III.

the incisors: to love was to hurt. he had teeth marks inked on his skin, with his aching marrows to prove his dedication. wrought in a burial was his flesh burning with forgotten maggots, rigor mortis veneering his architecture. this was the universe’s design; this fruit of deathless christening, this flower of seared capillaries.

the boyhood museum inevitably let him rest in this catacomb where mourning became the norms. here, he fell in the charm of death, its brutal hands wrapped around his neck with the weight of affection. it claimed him; it claimed his mother, then it claimed him. he learned to love it, too, in ways that he loved his mother.

he, however, had always known how to love the anatomy, the bones — he had always known the blueprint of humane edifices by heart. from the gentlest to the harshest, pound by pound, it called for his name. and he held their ideas inside him for the longest time, until they were no longer the same. until they, too, clattered into the rush of dissonance.

open battlefields were ribbons of suffocation, wisps inside his knots of an esophagus. but violent streaks ran nowhere but in his bloodstreams, rhyming the overture of sleepless hours spent on the longing.

            IV.

the revenants of revolution never skipped a heartbeat: there was always a lub-dub of life shivering underground. found himself stranded there before he, too, learned to love. and he loved, again and again and again, until he loved too much.

on the night three days before his eighteenth birthday, the moon hung itself like his mother did. stabbed and left for dead, their hatred mirrored his love — too much, too much, too much. he made a deal with the death for another paradox, promising that this time, he would learn to love better.

( in the end, he does not love better. death carved him into stalactites instead. )

            V.

the turpentine of twilight lures the deaths back to its morgue, sometimes in ashes, sometimes in commas – sometimes a period of crawling with smokes in-between. tattered teeth with keyholes and keywords, all rattling keys and sentences caught between the fangs, chewed up and spat out on the concrete. the start is always silent, the voices contained. in a room for two: housed between the flimsy walls would be him, bare to the skin to the flesh to the bones to the marrows. he drinks the quiet and lets it soak his blood vessels, veins and arteries creating a map like corrupted city streets.

nights are craters of the moonless dreams, deep enough to be called canyons. against the core of the bases would be arrhythmia waiting to happen. clasped to the soil would be footprints of indulgence – this is an elegy to addictions. every cursive of a movement creates a dynamic that he yearns so much, too much. every victory in the battlefield fractures the wasteland where he usually closes his eyes. wear and tear of the muscles and sinews, but here comes the marching sound of tomorrow; almost furtive, almost invisible. he doesn’t die tonight.

MUTATION.

darkness or shadow manipulation enables him to perform various tricks as long as there is the provided source of said element, which would be aplenty during the day and night. he’s able to mimic the darkness itself, using it as a means of transportation by opening portals through shadows, as well as producing offensive and defensive measures by solidifying the element, mostly by constructing weapons and shields. he can only use what’s available and enlarge it instead of creating it from full-fledged light.

STRENGTHS.

teleportation through shadows is what he primarily relies on, although this means that the shadows must not be too far apart — at four to five meters at the maximum in the distance, degree varying to his current stamina and energy. at this point in tier omega, he has yet to be able to merge himself fully in the darkness, so the transport is done via creating portals that he can dissolve into.

he can see in the dark due to enhanced vision, and this can be applied as seeing during the day. his sight is almost as perfect as it is in the light, although it could use some more honing. when new levels are unlocked, it’s possible for him to eventually see better in the dark than light. also, this application doesn’t require any adaptation.

umbrakinetic property construction via solidification of the element, and this includes weaponry to attack and protect himself with. solidified shadows work in the light as if it’s a solid matter as long as it’s been created to perfection by him prior to launch. this can also be used to trap people into their places by producing tendrils around the said people’s ankles, immobilizing his opponents.

WEAKNESSES.

up until this point he cannot create darkness out of nothing; there has to be sources, as small as they might be, to aid him during the expansion of darkness. he can make a small, condensed shadow into something bigger, but in the rare chances there isn’t any darkness at all, it will render his powers void.

distance of travel is limited, as teleportation through portals deplete his energy. it’s just faster than running, but it also consumes his energy as much as running would, just slightly less. when he’s exhausted, he won’t be able to perform this correctly, and there’s a possibility for him to be trapped within the portal for a few seconds.

moving shadows also prove to be troublesome towards his ability since it means that he might have to follow the shadows’ direction than his own. his teleportation also relies heavily on creating portal to portal from motioned shadows, causing this to be a hassle when it comes to reaching his destination.

he might be on par with light manipulators, depending on the opponent’s expertise. might find difficulties in adjusting his powers if all the shadows are erased via the light manipulation, which ends where he cannot perform his abilities at all.

while maintaining the solid features of the well-constructed items might not be a big problem, processing the dark energy to solid mass has proven to be a trouble for him, and it can take from below a minute for small projectiles like bullets, to up to five minutes to bigger weapons.

in the vein of inability to create darkness, while he can combine shadows to merge them into a bigger mass, but passing one shadow to the other via well-lit plane might exert more energy than necessary unless the shadows have been modified to be more solid.

[femslashy]

break the chain

happy birthday @carryonsimoncarryon!!

length: 3.7k

genre(s): angst+fluff

triggers/warnings: none

simon and baz get in a fight during 7th year and end up magically handcuffed together 

a/n: thank you @cherryonsimon for ur beta skills and brutal honesty :p AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAILEY!!!! ENJOY BEING OLD 💜💜

(if the readmore doesn’t work then just click the url and it will take you to the post ^__^)

Simon

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

My jaw drops and I stare at Agatha. She doesn’t look like she’s joking, and I start to feel sick.

“What?”

“I want to break up.”

“But--but why?”

“I just don’t think we’re good together,” she says, like her words aren’t devastating. Like she hasn’t just unraveled all of my plans for our future together.

“But...but I love you…” I say, a bit pathetically, and her face hardens.

“I’m not doing this because I don’t love you, Simon. I just don’t want to be with you anymore.”

I don’t know what to say to that, and she’s not listening anyway. She’s looking at something over my shoulder and I turn around quickly to see what it is.

It’s Baz.

He gives her a lazy wave and a wink, and when I face her again she’s gone pink.

“Him?” I say incredulously. “You’re breaking up with me for him?”

“What if I am?” she says, and I feel my magic starting to rise. She takes a step back, looking scared. I curse and try to force it back down.

“Agatha,” I say, but she’s still moving. “Agatha! I didn’t mean it!”

She spins on her heel and walks off, leaving me behind in the hall.

I’m sure I look like a fish out of water; students are leaving the classrooms and everyone’s giving me a funny look. I’m still fighting to keep my magic under control and I only have one thought on my mind: this is Baz’s fault.

* * *

Baz had somehow disappeared after my confrontation with Agatha, so I go looking for him. I eventually find him lurking in an unused corridor--the one with the room where the Crucible is stored. Surely Baz isn’t daft enough to try and mess with it. He must have some other scheme planned.

I don’t care what it is, I don’t care about anything else right now other than the fact that Baz has once again ruined my life.

I’m attempting to sneak up on him when the sole of my shoe squeaks, and he whips around.

“What do you want, Snow?” Baz spits, and I rush forward without thinking.

“This is all your fault!” I yell as I shove him, “if you’d just left Agatha well alone she wouldn’t have broken up with me!”

He looks confused for a second and then smirks. That makes me angrier, so I shove him again. Harder. This time his head makes a satisfying crack as it hits the wall. I rush forward with my arm pulled back, ready to punch him. He moves to block me and our hands collide in mid-air.

I feel a shimmer of magic around my wrist and my stomach drops. Baz must have cast something too low for me to hear, and now...well, I’m not really sure what he did until I look at my hand and see the shiny metal bracelet. I don’t realize what’s happened at first; Baz tugs his wrist and mine comes with it.

Merlin’s tits, I’m fucking handcuffed to Baz. What is he planning to do to me? This must be one of his schemes! He’s going to...he’s going to…

Well, I’m not sure what he’s going to do, but it probably involves me and a pair of handcuffs.

“What the hell, Baz!” I growl, “let me go!”

He looks indignant. “I didn’t do this!”

“Of course you did!”

“Crowley, Snow, do you really think I’d attach myself to you on purpose?”

Baz

The air starts to fill with smoke, and I realize it’s Snow. Shit, I should have known this would happen. He’s going to bloody go off. I’m tempted to poke him as I usually do--because I know he’ll just shield me--but I finally give into my urge to just...help him.

“Deep breaths now, Snow,” I say, and his head snaps up. He narrows his eyes at me, but I keep going; keep holding his gaze. “Let it go. Some of it. Before you start another fire. Whatever--fuck!”

Snow shoves me into the wall for the second time today, only this time he comes with me and I’m hit from both sides.

“What was that for? I was helping you, you numpty!”

“I don’t need your help,” he snarls.

“Fine!” I spit, “let’s go find you someone else then!”

* * * The Mage is away (not that I’d want his help anyway) and Miss Possibelf is no help at all.

“I can’t fix this, boys,” she says, sounding apologetic, “the Crucible contains old and powerful magic; we don’t know how this happened, and we don’t know how to reverse it either. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.”

Snow looks like he’s ready to go off again, and I give the chain a sharp tug. It seems to bring him back to his senses and the smell of smoke starts to fade away.

“You really can’t help us?” I ask, trying not to sound as desperate as I feel. She shakes her head, and I’m almost tempted to bring up my mother. Remind her who used to run the place.

But I don’t. I’m too tired and I don’t want to risk Snow almost going off again.

I stand, tugging a snarling Snow with me and stalk towards the door. He says a quick goodbye to Miss Possibelf who calls after us, “think of it as extra-credit!” (I’d like to tell her where she can stick her bloody extra credit).

Snow is still silent as I drag him along, and I almost wish I had the distraction from my thoughts.

Aleister Crowley, why me? And why did it have to be Snow? Why do I have to be joined at the wrist with the last person on earth I want to be this close to? It only makes me that much more aware of him.

And what I can never have.

* * *

Simon

Walking up to our room is difficult; the staircase is only wide enough for one person. Baz had shoved himself in front of me, and I had no choice but to follow. He’d been walking so fast that I’d had to work to keep up and nearly tripped at the top step.

“Having trouble, Snow?” Baz asks, meanly, once we’re at the door, and I have to stop myself from sticking my tongue out like a child. I make a point of not looking at him as I walk towards my bed. I don’t make it two steps before I’m yanked back by my wrist.

“What the hell, Baz!” I yelp and try to step forward again, only to be pulled back more forcefully this time.

Two can play at this game, I think as I bend my elbow quickly, making Baz stumble forward. I do it again, and he mimics the movement until we’re playing tug-o-war with the cuffs. I’m glaring at him, and he’s glaring right back. Neither of us are backing down, and, finally, I can’t take it anymore.

He’s unprepared for my surrender and, after a particularly forceful tug, I slam into Baz’s chest with an oof.

“What the hell Baz!” I shout, “how am I supposed to sleep if you won’t let me get into bed?” he raises an eyebrow and it dawns on me.

He must see it on my face, because he sneers,  “figured it out, have you?”

Merlin, have I. Not only are we being forced to eat and attend classes together, but we’re going to have to share a bed as well. This is probably the worst thing that’s happened to me, aside from the time the crucible cast the two of us together in first year. And the time with the chimera. But it’s definitely in the top five.

“Which one?” I ask, as though either of the beds are big enough for two people.

Baz looks at me like I’m daft. “We have to push them together.”

That makes sense. Damn him for being so right all the time. He’s such a show-off. I feel a tug on my wrist, gentle this time, and I realize Baz asked me something.

“Sorry?”

He rolls his eyes. “I asked if you were ready.”

“Oh. Right...yes...okay--yeah. Yeah, I’m ready.”

We both take a step forward, careful not to pull the other person, and then stop and stare at the two beds.

“How are we going to do this?” I ask.

Baz sniffs. “We’re mages, Snow. We’re going to use magick, obviously.”

I reach for my wand, and Baz shakes his head. “We won’t have beds if you do that.” He points his wand at my bed and says “oh the places you’ll go!” The bed start to vibrate and he directs it to the other side of the room with his wand.

Baz

“I could have done that,” Snow says, insistently, and I almost start laughing. Until it dies in my throat, because I’ve just remembered we’re handcuffed together.

“Snow,” I say, “how are we going to get…” I don’t know what to say. How do we strip down? How will we manage our pyjamas? I don’t know any spells to get clothes off, only on.

Simon seems to understand, because he lifts his wand and casts it’s gettin’ hot in here; I’m suddenly down to my pants, and throw a quick hand in front of myself.

“Fuck a nine-toed troll, Snow! Warn me next time!”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, covering himself in the same way. We shuffle awkwardly to the en suite and both manage to kick our pants off with our eyes closed.

The shower is torture. Snow steps in and immediately turns to face the wall; I step in and turn the opposite way.  It’s probably the quickest I’ve ever washed, and I shiver out of the spray as Simon finishes. He avoids eye contact as he gets out and grabs us both towels, and I hold mine in front of myself with one hand.

“Thanks,” I mumble, and he nods.

“How are we going to get our pyjamas on?” he asks, and I curse because I didn’t think about that.

I pick up my wand from where it’s resting on the sink and try to cast the clothes make the man--which I’ve used before to get my uniform on in a hurry--but it doesn’t work. I curse again, and then remember the spell my stepmother uses to get the baby ready for bed when he’s fussy. It’s juvenile and embarrassing, but it should work.

“Wee willie winkie!” I try, hoping I won’t have to cast the whole rhyme (because I don’t remember it. And I can’t exactly ask Daphne for help.) Mercifully, it works. Snows got his usual school-issued bottoms on, and I’m wearing my favorite silk pair. I sigh in relief; at least some things are going right today.

Snow looks like he’s trying not to laugh. “Did you just cast a spell for babies?”

“I didn’t see you offering up any ideas,” I sneer.

He shrugs, just like he always fucking does, and picks up his toothbrush. I do the same, and we get ready for bed in silence.

Simon

Sigfried and fucking Roy, I’m sleeping next to Baz. Not that I’ve never done that. Sleep next to Baz, I mean. But it’s different now, the space between us is gone. He’s always been close enough to touch, but now he’s so close I could kiss him.

Not that I want to kiss him, of course; he’d probably cast something nasty if I even tried, but the thought is still there. Then I remember Baz is a vampire, and that kissing him would be dangerous. (Also he’s my sworn enemy and I’m going to have to kill him someday. Kissing would just complicate things.)

How would I even do it, anyway? Just lean in and kiss him? He’s sleeping, can I do it when he’s sleeping?

Baz shifts in his sleep, and our fingers brush. I feel something when it happens, like a tingle. Only it’s not magic. It’s--it’s...well, I can’t consider what it is. Except trying not to think about Baz is like...it’s like trying not to think about an elephant that’s standing on your chest.

I can’t do it.

Having Baz next to me is a strange comfort, and I can barely keep my eyes open. i shouldn’t give in, especially not when Baz is so close, but I’m exhausted. Besides, if Baz tries anything it will wake me up. (I think.)

I lie awake for as long as I can. And then, for the first time in a long time, I fall asleep with Baz in the room.

* * *

Baz

When I wake up the next morning, I’m convinced I’m dreaming. Snow’s head is on my shoulder-- he’s still asleep, thank magic--and his hand is resting on my hip. It hurts to do it, but I slowly extract myself from his grip, holding my breath the entire time.

As soon as I’m completely free, Snow wakes up. He blinks sleepily at me, and the sunlight turns his curls golden. I can’t stand to look at him.

How many days am I going to have to endure this torture? Waking up to an angelic Simon Snow; one that can never be mine.

“Good morning,” Simon says, and I ignore him. He looks confused but doesn’t try again.

We get ready in silence.

Simon

Baz used the clothes make the man on us this morning, and I swear I feel more posh. (I don’t say anything, though. Baz would never let me live that down.) (Me? Posh? Never.)

Everyone turns to look at us as we enter the dining hall, and I’m tempted to walk back out. Only I can’t, because Baz marches us right over to get food, and then to a table right in the middle of everything.

Merlin and Morgana, I’m tempted to hide under the bloody table; instead, I decide to make the best of it and dig into my eggs.

“Circe, Snow!” Baz snaps. “Do you really need to chew with your mouth open like that?”

I grin at Baz, making sure he can see everything. (He looks disgusted. Good.)

* * *

This situation didn’t affect our class schedules--beyond forcing us to sit next to each other--because we have all of the same courses, but I didn’t consider what would happen after.

Baz is sulking because he has to miss football practice, and I’m sulking because I’d been practicing a new sword fighting technique and now I can’t perfect it. I sigh loudly, and Baz raises an eyebrow.

“What is it, Snow?”

“I’m supposed to be practicing with my sword. I can’t do that when I’m stuck with you.” I say angrily.

His neutral facial expression drop. “Oh, and I suppose this is a fucking picnic for me, then?“ Baz spits, “how am I supposed to play football? Or practice violin? This isn’t just about you and your bloody sword, Snow! I have a life too! Or do you really think I spend my days ‘plotting your demise’?”

I open my mouth to argue, but all I can think to say is, “fuck off, Baz.”

He rattles the chain of the cuffs and sneers. “I can’t, thanks to you.”

“You’re the one who started the fight!”

“I did no such thing,” he sniffs. “You’re the one who pushed me first, you fucking animal.”

“You stole Agatha from me!”

“You can’t blame me for that. You lost Agatha on your own.”

I stand up then, pulling him with me. I’m about to start yelling when I notice that Baz looks even grayer than usual; like he’s ill or something. Except...except Baz hasn’t been ill in all his years at Watford. Something else must be wrong--I suspect it’s a vampire thing.  

Merlin, how did I forget? Baz is a vampire! Baz needs blood. Baz hasn’t been able to get blood since we got handcuffed together; he must be thirsty.

Baz needs...blood...

Oh, Merlin. What am I going to do?

“Baz?” I ask tentatively.

He looks up and scowls. “What?”

“Are you--are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine,” he snaps, but I can tell he’s not. He looks weak, like he’s about to pass out at any second.

“Are you--I mean you’re not...you’re not going to--going to bite me, are you?”

He looks like I’ve just slapped him. “Do you have any idea what my father would do to me if I bit a human? He would--” Baz stops short; I feel a strange sort of satisfaction, because he’s just admitted it. That he’s a vampire. That he drinks blood.

That he doesn’t bite people.

“You don’t want to bite me?”

“Crowley, Simon. Of course not.”

There it is again. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Calling me Simon.”

“Do you prefer ‘Chosen One’ then?”

“No...no--I like it--Simon. I like Simon.”

He rolls his eyes, and then wobbles slightly on his feet, which reminds me of my mission. “We’re going to the catacombs.”

“Crowley,” Baz says, “we are not.”

I grab his hand; I’m not taking no for an answer. “You’re not going to die on me; not today.” And I drag him out the door.

* * *

Baz

It took me a bit to be able to look Snow in the eye after what I’d let him witness. He’d bullied me into it, of course, and now I have no where else to look but his eyes--considering his face is right in front of mine.

We’re lying side by side in bed, both propped up on our elbows, and I say what’s been worrying me ever since I fed. “Aren’t you going to go running off to the Mage?”

“What? Why?”

“Because you have proof now. That I’m a--”

“Vampire?”

I nod, and he shrugs. (Of course he does.)

“I don’t care.”

“You--you don’t--” I’m spluttering just as bad as Snow, and he fucking shrugs again.

“I mean, it freaked me out when I thought you were going to drain me dry one night, but now that I know you won’t, well...I don’t care.” he laughs. “It’s not like I’m a militant vegetarian or something.

“You don’t care.” I say flatly, because I still don’t believe him. He looks like he’s about to shrug again, and I stand up abruptly. He hisses as his arm is yanked up and glares.

“Christ, Baz! Warn me next time?”

I turn away. “Let’s get ready for bed.”

He doesn’t move. “How can I convince you?”

“I don’t know.” I really don’t.

He seems to accept this as an answer, because he drops the subject. After a while, his breathing slows, and I know he’s fallen asleep. He whimpers--nightmare--and I’m tempted to reach for him. Before I get a chance he rolls on his side, throwing his arm over me. I stay very still, sure that he’s going to wake up and move away, but he doesn’t.

I fall asleep in Simon’s arms.

* * * Simon

When I wake up, Baz is sitting at the edge of the beds, fully dressed. (I don’t know how he did that without waking me up, and that should make me nervous.)  (Except it doesn’t)

“There’s probably something at my house that will help us. We can go there today.”

“And then what?” I ask.

“And then this is all over and we can go back to normal.”

“Normal as in--as in being enemies? Fighting?” He nods, and I frown. I’d thought...I don’t know what I thought. I guess I thought he wouldn’t want to fight anymore.

“Maybe we could--maybe we don’t...don’t have to do that.”

He shakes his head, looking resigned. “There’s no point. Nothing’s going to change; as soon as these come off we’re just going to go back to how we were before. We shouldn’t--”

“Baz.” I interrupt, and his eyes meet mine. He looks nervous. Scared, even. His brow is furrowed and I’m tempted to reach up and smooth it out. And maybe let my hand fall to the back of his neck and pull him down, until he’s the right height for me to--

“I don’t want to fight you anymore.” I whisper.

“I don’t want to fight you either.” Baz whispers back, looking even more nervous and scared than before.

I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff; the anticipation is intoxicating. ”What do you want then?”

Baz steps forward and leans down until our foreheads are touching. “I want you,”

I lift my hand and place it on his cheek. “You can have me.”

And then Baz presses his lips to mine.

Baz

Aleister Crowley, I’m kissing Simon Snow. I’m kissing the bloody Mage’s Heir and he’s letting me. He’s more than letting me. He’s got his fingers in my hair and is pulling me closer, closer and crashing his mouth into mine again and again, until I’m gasping.

I swear he murmurs my name, but I don’t have much time to dwell on it, because he���s doing that nice thing with his chin and sliding his tongue in my mouth.

He’s done this before, I can tell. Except I’m not jealous, because he isn’t kissing anyone else right now. He’s kissing me, and I’m kissing him, and it feels good. (So good.)

We kiss until we can’t anymore, and Simon pulls his head back. His hand falls from my cheek, and I mourn its absence.

Simon

I feel something pulling me towards him, only this time it’s not The Crucible. It’s... well I’m not really sure what it is; all I know is that I want to be as close to Baz as possible. Right now. The hook in my belly feels so familiar that I want to laugh.

Before I can stop myself, I’m holding out my hand.

Baz looks at me like I’m mad, and, for a moment, I’m afraid he’s going to reject me the same way he did in first year. I’m about to drop my hand when he clasps my fingers. I can’t stop the smile that spreading across my face, and he’s blushing. (As much as Baz can blush, that is.)

“Hello,” I say, “I’m Simon Snow.”

“Nice to meet you, Simon,” he replies. “I’m Baz.”

And, just like that, the chain is broken.

[furederiko]

What does a Policeman, Sheriff, and Rebellion have in common? Space. ...Because I'm talking about a Super Sentai multiverse crossover!

- Our episode begins right away with Madako SUCCESSFULLY stealing the Pyxis Kyu Globe! Don't know how this new sultry version was able to do that, it just sort of... happened. Off screen. Oh, in case you forgot why, we get a quick flashback of Scorpio commanding her to obtain the Carina Kyu Globe. How Madako even had the knowledge that Pyxis is the radar to locate the item is beyond me, but the most important thing is... she now accidentally gets sucked into a black hole. Yikes! - Since Pyxis is vital to their mission (though I'd argue they didn't really use it to locate Vela before), Leo Red simply ignores the factual threat of said black hole, and jumps in. Totally dragging his away team along with him. Speaking of team, this current away team consists of Lucky, Garu, Hammy, Naga and Commander Xiao this time. Why this particular combination, one wonders? Well, because aside from Hammy, the others are necessary to service the story. I'll get to this soon. - For some reason, our heroes pop out of the... MOON? Which means, yes, they are returning to Earth. But why does this one look... different? Is this even the same planet? NOPE, because a certain someone who witnesses their entrance kindly explains that arriving through a wormhole means... these illegal trespassers must have arrived from 'ANOTHER UNIVERSE'. Wait, WHAT? And this observer is none other than... Banban 'Ban' Akaza (Ryuji Sainei) of "Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger"! - Yeah, this brief moment of clarity firmly establishes that Kyuranger is NOT taking place in the same universe to previous, 40 Sentai seasons. So to those out there hoping for them to bump into everyone's favorite Gokaiger anytime soon (who have been established to be canon with Dekaranger, hence that crossover episode), don't get your hopes up too high. Unless the team stumbles upon another black hole once more. This also clears up the confusion to why no trace of Zyuland can be found on Kyuranger's Earth, meaning there's no continuity issue like I pointed out 17 weeks ago. Wait a sec, then how did they show up in "Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger vs Shuriken Sentai Ninninger" then? Hmmmm... - Oh, and Deka Red isn't alone, because Geki Juumonji (Yuma Ishigaki) a.k.a Space Sheriff Gavan Type-G is present as well. Yep, not the original metal hero series Gavan, but the 2nd generation who debuted in "Uchuu Keiji Gavan: The Movie" a few years back. Is this a coincidence, then? Absolutely NOT. Considering "SPACE SQUAD: Space Sheriff Gavan vs Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger", the crossover movie between Dekaranger and Gavan Type-G is arriving on Japanese theatres tomorrow. Specifically Saturday, June 17th, 2017! Yes folks, that means you're not wrong if you see this as shameless marketing. LOL. - Lucky and Naga are confusedly admiring a Consumarz-free Earth, when they notice Geki is escorting Madako like the dumb-heroic gentleman he's always been. Cue the misunderstanding! Aaaah, Gavan Type-G is so metalic... and SHINY ("PIKA... PIKA...", says Naga), my eyes hurts. Oh, and Ophiucus Silver kindly explains why he's being paired up with Leo Red this time, because obviously Deka Red is going to pair up with Gavan Type-G. Don't sweat it, it's a kids show after all. Just your daily Red and Silver situation! LOL. - Adding further insult to the injury, two more Dekaranger members arrive to... arrest Garu, Hammy, and Xiao. Just as our poor Kyurangers are being dumbfounded to see an Earth with so much PEACE, smiles, and laughters. On what reason? Due to the lack of proper 'interplanetary visa', complete with a nice joke that works as a follow up to last week's ending. Officers in charge are none other than our brainy Senichi 'Sen' Enari (Yousuke Itou), and bathtub-enthusiast Koume 'Umeko' Kodou (Mika Kikuchi). They are Deka Green and Pink respectively, in case you're not familiar with Space Police Dekaranger. For the record, the timeline of this universe chronologically takes place after their "Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger 10 YEARS AFTER" V-Cinema. We're getting some development regarding this pair later in the closing scene, as a prove to that. One that also explains why Umeko still hasn't changed her family name into Enari... (^^) - Hold on, make that THREE members. Considering our 'trespassers' are immediately taken to the Neo Deka Base, where they get to meet... Chief Doggie Kruger (VA: Tetsu Inada). Obviously he's present to become direct comparison to Garu, or vice versa. The wolfman even calls him... "ANIKI!!!". LOL. It works the same with Xiao, because both are non-human anthropomorphic leaders of their respective teams. So yeah, it's one of that small dream-sequence that only Super Sentai fans would understand and appreciate... *grins*. It's genuine hillarious though, and easily my favorite part of the episode. NOTE: Too bad fan favorite Marika 'Jasmine' Reimon (Ayumi Kinoshita) is a no-show. Her actress had recently announced her 2nd pregnancy via her blog. So likely that's the reason behind her absence. - Hot-headed hot-blooded loud-mouthed Gavan and Leo Red are busy fighting, they practically let Madako go unscathed. Ophiucus Silver senses that something feels off, and stops the fight by... getting punched in the face. By BOTH. OOWWWW!! Naga also nails this next joke, thanks to his naive curiosity about 'Policeman'. A term that apparently does NOT exist in their "Star Wars"-inspired Jark Matter-infested universe. But seriously though, it's really these character moments that makes crossover stories so great. Hey, even Sharivan, Shaider, and the original Gavan are making quick flashback-cameo! - The whole comparison between 'Policeman' and 'Universe Saviors' needs to be put on hold though, because Madako is running away using Geki's Dolgiran. She's using the spaceshuttle as her escape route to return home, because as Doggie had stated before, the dimensional rift is closing soon. Thankfully, hitching a ride on Leo Voyager (with siren! LOL), Geki jumps into the ship to regain control. Simply by crashlanding it to the ground. YIKES! Call me weird... but I haven't seen the Gavan series yet, nor any of those Space Sheriff title. But on the other hand, I've always dig the Akira Kushida's theme song. It just sounds so cool, catchy and... addictive to listen to, eventhough it could be regarded as an old tune. Speaking of old, I also just noticed that aside from looking older and darker-skinned than the last I saw him (in that 2013 "Super Hero Taisen Z" movie, assuming my memory is sound), Geki seems to be more buffed than usual as well. In a country whose people are mostly skinny as a stick, that's... NICE! *grins* - Ban arrives on scene and saves the day! I guess Lucky and Geki are too good of a combi (they practically share the exact personality, even their names rhyme! LOL), the equally hyperactive hot-blooded Ban doesn't have a place, eh? Similar to Gavan Type-G, I didn't actually see Dekaranger because of this... thing with police-themed shows. But dang it, the Dekaranger BGM sounds cool as well, particularly that high-spirited theme song by PSYCHIC LOVER. Anyway, Ban's the Fire Squad Captain now? I didn't remember that from the 10 YEARS AFTER movie. Perhaps he has gotten promotion ever since? He explains that the other Kyurangers, as well as Dekarangers (appearing via stock footage only. Old footage is OLD!) are using Ryutei-Oh and Deka Wing to stall the wormhole from shrinking. So it's up to the Red-Silver Team to tidy up their side of the table then. - Deka Red and Leo Red team up to take on Madako (who is equally Red...), while Gavan and Ophiucus Silver deal with the Deathworm she brought. Their joint-finishers are amazing, particularly that last one with the galactic backdrop. Truly fan-service delight, after all... these ARE Space Heroes. I guess Madako is gone for good this time, huh? Rather unceremoniously too. But since every Super Sentai episode needs a giant mecha fight, of course the Deathworm grows large. How to deal with this situation, when the other Kyurangers are busy with the wormhole? Time for Gavan's Electronic Star-Beast Dol (it's the blue lower part of Dolgiran, by the way) to steal the show. But hold that thought, because Draco Voyager comes rushing in for a SWEET double dragon-mecha combi. I have had an inking suspicion that this episode is going to pull this off, ever since I read the headline that Gavan Type-G would be guest starring in Kyuranger. But I sure didn't expect Leo Red to jump towards to Voyager's head, in order to mimic Gavan's movement. Now THAT is what I call pleasant surprise! - Lucky and the others make it back safely to the Orion, where Spada, maid-Raptor and maid-Balance (seriously, he's Sentai official queer character, guys! At least... IMO) greet them with some piping hot Takoyaki. A rather cruel way to celebrate the absence of Madako, huh? Nah... likely because takoyaki are ball-shaped. Pyxis Kyu Globe is back in their possession, so now they can proceed to locate the final piece of Argo Navis. All's well ends well. Or is it? We see Stinger removing his Constellation Blaster and Rebellion jacket, replaces them with his desert cape, and walks away from the Rebellion HQ. This is the appearances of when he debuted in the show, serving as a rogue spy. Does this mean Stinger officially walks out from being a Kyuranger? Hence that solo V-Cinema? We'll see...

Overall: Naruhisa Arakawa, the same guy who wrote Dekaranger was in charge of this episode. And he's truly the man when it comes to crossovers. As proven by "Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger", Arakawa has a strong sense of what makes each separate series and their characters shine, hence why this episode came equipped with a good amount of fan-service moments for our genuine pleasure. It wasn't perfect, nope, because one mere episode was a bit too short and brief to be considered a full-on crossover. Especially one that involves three different series! Hence why the opening started off rather rough and rushed, and the absence of the remaining Dekarangers/Gavan supporting cast. Which honestly felt a little disappointing somehow. Plus, the non Red-Silver team was easily sidelined, to the point we didn't even see them transform nor fight together on screen. IMHO, this would've been way better as a 2-parter, to allow more character interactions and bonding, which is easily the gem of any crossovers. Minor nitpickings aside, this was obviously still MUCH better than that bland Ex-Aid episode. Thanks to that whole multiverse angle, I'm now crossing my fingers, in the hope that one day the Kyuranger eventually runs into Gokaiger, or other Sentai team that is not Zyuohger (because they WILL have a Versus movie next year). Here's hoping if such wishful thinking comes to life, Arakawa will be given the privilege to write one. At the very least, he needs to do another episode in this show! Next week: Battle for Carina! And forest...Elves? PS: There's no episode on June 18th due to annual Golf championship. Kyuranger will return on June 25th...

Episode 18 Score: 8 out of 10

Visit THIS LINK to view a continuously updated listing of the Kyutama / Kyu Globes. Last Updated: June 11th, 2017 - Version 2.04. (WARNING: It might contain spoilers for future episodes)

All images are screencaptured from the series, provided by the FanSubber Over-Time. "Uchu Sentai Kyuranger" is produced by TOEI, and airs every Sunday on TV-Asahi. Credits and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

[topmixtrends]

IN THREE LINES at the upper right corner of the first page of my copy of the study score of Anton Webern’s Concerto, Opus 24, the words Mark Wallace / July 12, 1983 / San Francisco are written in the kind of rough blue ballpoint pen that has gone seriously out of fashion in the ensuing 35 years. When I made that inscription, at 16 — done with high school a year early and soon off to college — I did not yet understand the Webern Concerto as a masterpiece of both artistic expression and musical design. Nor did I understand it as the piece of music that would determine the course of my life, though that, for a time, is exactly what it did.

My musical education had started early, if informally. I was reading music at the piano by age four or five, taught by my father, who was then in transition from beatnik to hippie and whose own considerable musical talents included a funky touch on the electric bass. I used to think I had inherited not just my father’s musicality, but some spirit of music that also resided in the instruments he played. When my mother was pregnant with me (her first), it occurred to my parents that they wouldn’t be able to afford the hospital bills they’d soon be facing. So my father made the difficult decision to sell his last motorcycle, a handsome early 1960s Norton 500 Single. In my memory of this story, my father had sold his last stand-up bass in order to raise enough cash to buy the motorcycle. But when I check with my father, I find I have embellished the story: I am not, in fact, descended from a stand-up bass. Did my dad really sell his last bike to pay for my birth? According to my father, “Definitely.”

I wasn’t a gifted piano player, but I could manage simple classical pieces by the time I was a teen — up to Mozart sonatas, with luck and concentration — though I had never had lessons. I had begun writing music by then as well, short pieces that hoped to mimic things I had glimpsed in the music I was playing, even if I couldn’t yet express what those things were: the architectural order of Bach; Mozart’s alchemy of the ebullient and the sublime.

I knew so little of music’s building blocks that I scarcely had any idea how those effects had been achieved. Most of what we think of as Western “classical” music is based on the diatonic scale, which uses only seven of the 12 tones available on an instrument like the piano. Some of these tones are thought of as “leading” to other tones — in particular to the “tonic,” the note that names the key (the C in the key of C Major, for instance). Thus certain chords “lead” to other chords, and altering a given set of chords can make them lead to yet a different set of chords. To heighten the pull in various directions, dissonant tones can be added to a chord, creating tensions which, in classical music, must then be resolved. By creating, delaying, and resolving these tensions to various degrees — and by leveraging traditions from the centuries of music we commonly think of as euphonious, as pleasing to the ear — composers of Western classical music can generate everything from delicately balanced cloud cathedrals to the darkest, most plodding of dirges, and almost any other kind of musical effect one can imagine.

I was not able to create such structures then. Composing, at that point, was little more than fanciful for me, just another way to explore, something to do at the piano. Until I heard the Webern.

The particular July 12 noted in my score was a Tuesday. I remember sitting in my friend Scott’s small apartment the previous weekend, an audible river of traffic flowing east over the crest of Oak Street’s hill outside. Inside, I imagined the specter of unseen roommates lurking beyond the door, as if they might catch us at something illicit or transgressive. I hadn’t known Scott long nor had I had more than a handful of conversations with him before that day. He was older, 21 or 22. I had, uncharacteristically, introduced myself to him after seeing him play an acoustic gig at a coffee shop in the suburb where I lived, backing a local singer-songwriter on stand-up bass. Something in his playing that day drowned out my self-consciousness. I had my own common passions: The Beatles, Bach, David Bowie, Elvis Costello. But Scott was the first person I’d met who was as avid and passionate a fan of classical music as he was of “popular” songs. He was tall and handsome and animated and slightly weird, he was extremely talented and enormously knowledgeable, and he spoke to me not as an older person to a younger one, not as master to student, but just as one fan to another, as the thing every slightly precocious kid seems to crave: a peer.

Some things about that day are vivid, while others are lost. I don’t remember whether his roommates were home that day. I don’t recall the Webern album cover. Mostly I remember the objects that enabled our experience: the record player, the printed music. I remember that Scott and I huddled beside each other on the edge of his bed as he placed the stylus on the record and we heard the scratchy hiss of the lead-in groove. And as the woodwinds lit up to open the piece, our eyes followed the notes that cascaded over the pages of Scott’s copy of the score.

For a concerto, Webern’s is sparing. Only nine instruments are called for, and there is never a moment at which they all play at once. At first, the music sounded tentative to me. The piece introduced itself with briefly sounded gestures, two or three notes at a time, not enough to be called a phrase. The opening notes of the woodwinds and trumpet were echoed, altered, in the piano. The woodwinds were joined by the pluck of pizzicato strings to sound a similar idea. Then everyone stepped aside for two bars in which the piano nearly let the music die away. As the instruments reached deeper, almost straining toward their lower registers, I realized that everything till then had happened high up the scale. The rich tones of the violin and viola opened up now, and as the colors continued to shift I made another realization: that melody as I knew it wasn’t part of what was going on here. The concerto seemed composed entirely of these brief, atomic gestures. As I watched them spill across the pages of the score, the effect was thrilling.

No one walked in on us that day, nor would they have discovered anything untoward if they had. All we were doing was listening to music — though the experience felt somehow intimate, like I’d discovered some wonderful, powerful secret, some half-obscured body of knowledge or unspoken lore. Like I’d been introduced to some experience as heightened and risky as sex (an experience I had yet to be introduced to).

It is one of the virtues of musical notation and modern engraving techniques that a thin paper booklet, almost weightless, can be made to contain all the mass and movement and color of an orchestra. The Webern score is slim. The piece’s 70 measures fill only 16 pages, each covered with markings that led deep into a territory I found more and more intriguing as the music played on. I read the German names of instruments arrayed down the left side of the pages, and followed the five-line staffs corresponding to each one as they unfurled to the right. A short phrase in one instrument seemed to call forth something similar in another, as if the voices were in conversation with each other. As Scott turned the pages I sat in silence, noting the changing forces, the dynamics, the ligatures, the markings and directions I didn’t yet understand. It was as if the piano music that was all I’d known till then had suddenly exploded into three dimensions. Somehow, without explanation and without knowing those German words that later became so familiar (Posaune, Bratsche, lebhaft, langsam), I understood what I was seeing on the page.

Music, I discovered, made sense to me.

And this music made a kind of sense that had never been made to me before. I was instantly alert to it, attuned to its evolving three-note motif even as I realized it had none of the structure I had intuited from classical music, none of the same kind of balance and symmetry. This music had a different kind of structure: a framework I could hear, but one I didn’t yet understand. As unfamiliar as its style was, I was aware that it had a style, an internal consistency that told me the music was complete in itself, that it was whole. It was a different kind of wholeness than that of Bach or Mozart. The music was not in any key, and that was intriguing. There was no single tone here with that kind of gravitational pull. Instead, the music built on a foundation it seemed to devise itself, rather than one common to other pieces. It established its own terms with the notes and figures and structures that announced the piece, and then reshaped those arguments in subtle ways with each passing bar. There was much elusive quicksilver here, and little that one would call tuneful. Though I had heard nothing like it before, it was somehow not surprising. Its foundations felt solid and secure.

¤

Perhaps I was drawn to Webern’s structure because my early life had had so little. The music was a kind of homecoming, after years of instability and constant uprootings. My family left New York City in the early ’70s, spurred by my father’s attraction to the emerging lifestyles and back-to-the-land ethos of the time. Upstate we skipped from home to home, and the occasional commune, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Like Webern’s figures, we never stopped moving, pulling up stakes every year or two, sometimes less. Not because we were on the lam or in the military or being transferred from place to place for someone’s job, but only because we were never at rest. We’d moved 10 times by the time I became a teenager, leaving schools behind in the middle of the year, leaving friends. There seemed little direction to our path.

My father worked on farms or at odd jobs: roasting coffee, delivering carpets. With a friend he made extra money dismantling abandoned farm buildings, selling the weathered lumber to interior decorators in New York. I have a memory of him, shirtless and wiry, as he straddles the spine of a once-solid barn now gone trapezoidal, its walls, dirty and red, covered in creeper vines. He rides the building as it leaps and collapses at once, taming it not by might but through devotion, as though letting it know he would stay with it no matter how hard it bucked or charged. With the money, he bought sheets of glass and glass-cutting tools and taught himself to make windows to put in our house, nearly all of which were broken when we moved in.

Our rural life was not without its charms. My parents were loving and we were, for the most part, happy, if poor. I remember crunching the tart stalks of rhubarb that grew in the cool shadow of our house and catching fireflies on the lawn in the warm evenings. I remember Ancramdale and the general store stuck in time there, with its gapped and ancient floorboards, brass fixtures glowing dully against the massive, dark walnut-and-glass display cabinets behind the counter, the paper rolls of candy dots, and penny jars filled with root-beer barrels and jawbreakers. The many-colored candy sticks my younger brother and I always craved. For a year when I was 10 we lived up the road from that store in a 16-room house on many acres of land belonging to the novelist Hilary Masters, son of the poet Edgar Lee Masters, whose Spoon River Anthology chronicled life in a small town not nearly so small as ours. Masters was on a sabbatical or visiting professorship somewhere, and my father was hired as caretaker of the estate for a year.

One task in the Masters house, in the winter of the year we spent there, was to shut up what we called “the library.” In memory’s floor plan, the library consists of a cozy sitting room with a tall stone fireplace, a bedroom we weren’t allowed to enter, and, joining them, a tall and narrow corridor lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves. I remember none of these books’ titles, only the sense of wonder they inspired in me. I had long before read (and loved) Laura Ingalls Wilder and books like Charlotte’s Web and Harriet the Spy. I was an avid reader of my parents’ cast-off paperbacks, having plowed through their copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, every volume of science fiction I could get my hands on, and, though it gave me nightmares, Jaws. But the books in the Masters library seemed somehow of greater moment, as though weightier matters were being discussed between their covers. I hardly dared imagine the day I might enter those discussions, let alone perform the magic of conjuring one myself.

That house was our idyll, but most were not like that. Mostly we lived in small country houses that listed nearly as much as the barns my father tore down. At one point (was I seven? eight?), there was a split in which my parents lived apart for a month or more — a split that bewildered me for many years in part because they were otherwise relatively happy together, or at least constant. One image from that period sticks with me: I am looking for my father in the house — a particularly shabby one — and find him in one of the upstairs bedrooms. I peer through the door as light streams in the window opposite to fill the bare and empty room. There is only a mattress on the floor, or that’s all my memory has focused on, for it turns out my father is not alone in the room: on the mattress is a woman, naked or nearly so, who is not my mother. In my memory, the door swings slowly shut and I slink away. My memory has gotten the house wrong, or the time, my father says, but such a scene is entirely plausible: my parents had conducted a years-long experiment in open marriage. The split I remember was brought on when my father, who had instigated our hippie period, decided he wanted a more traditional relationship again.

If we moved upstate to get close to the land, for my father I think it worked. In the country, he discovered a natural grace and connectedness that was in sharp contrast to his earlier life in New York. He’d been a runaway in his teens — his stories tell of drugs, guns, prostitutes, desperation — and while we were hardly settled during my childhood, the life he created for himself (and, by extension, for us) was at least slightly more structured than the years in which he was very much on the road. To me, life felt out of balance, but to him I imagine things felt peaceful by comparison.

If there was a plan to our life in that time, though, a method, it was not one comprehensible to the limited scope of a child’s mind. Stability answers something in us, when we are young. The world should not be nuanced, since we are only just getting our heads around ideas of black and white, forward and back, right and wrong. It was impossible for me to grapple with notions of impermanence when notions of permanence were still only just forming in my mind. I didn’t consciously crave stability in the years in which we knocked around upstate New York; instead, I developed a keen sensitivity to the unstable, a deep and abiding confidence that, at any moment, everything about the scene around me was liable to be upended, that at any moment things could radically change.

So when even our instability changed — when we became stable — it was as jarring as any move that had come before. My father went back to school, for a graduate degree in computer science. We moved to a suburb of Albany so that he could attend the state university there. And then — also bewildering, and especially jarring to me, at 13 — we pulled up stakes once again and moved to California. It was January 1980, the middle of eighth grade, and my father had gotten a job in San Francisco as a computer programmer; he’d gone straight. We settled in a house in the suburbs, where my parents would stay for many years, and I finished middle school in a daze, helped along by the beer and marijuana I began to pilfer from my dad’s supply. I did well in high school — the experimental school I went to let me graduate at the end of my junior year — but by then I had discovered a taste for LSD and cocaine. I swore I wouldn’t repeat what I saw as the mistakes of my father, but in fact I was already humming the same tuneless song I’d been raised on, though it hadn’t yet swelled to drown out the other musics in my life.

¤

Melody has not been entirely discarded in the Webern Concerto, but there is no real tune to be heard there. Instead, there are small figures that arise and recede, that connect into almost-melodies, or combine to make longer unfoldments. As we listened, Scott traced the course of the performance, pointing out the measures as they passed. That the music seemed to trip across the page exactly as it tripped from the speakers should have come as no surprise, I suppose, but it’s likely I had never seen an orchestral score before. We listened to the concerto’s three movements — not even seven minutes from beginning to end — without speaking. The voices danced around each other, never quite colliding, never quite disentangling themselves. They seemed to pass ideas from one to another, and soon I realized there was but one idea at the center of those sounds, one idea with just as much gravitational pull as the ideas at the center of a piece like a Mozart sonata. The center of the Webern piece was harder to describe; I could sense its presence but I couldn’t feel its shape. The three-note figures that are the building blocks of the piece looked like birds or spiders; they skittered across the page and seemed to leave it almost as soon as they’d appeared. But the score brought them quite literally within reach; with the score in hand, I knew I could find them again, that I too could step into the world from which they’d come. It was not just the music on the page that took on three dimensions as I sat and watched the score, it was music itself. If I could reach such a place, I thought, great things might be possible. To do that, I would need my own copy of the flimsy, weighty artifact that was the Webern score.

Scott gave me an address, and as soon as I could manage — on that summer Tuesday marked in my score — I took the bus into the city, to a block of 10th Street south of Market that seemed too boring and industrial to house such treasures. There I found a place called Byron Hoyt, an enormous retail warehouse of sheet music, orchestral parts, and study scores, all tidily filed in wooden bins, partitioned by stiff dividers of gray-green cardboard, and overseen by a gruff but helpful staff of mostly men and just a few women, all of them older than I could then imagine I would ever become. I would haunt the aisles of this place, and its several subsequent incarnations, for the next decade.

I no longer recall whether I wandered the floor on that first visit or went straight to the study scores. But I know that in the “W” bin, behind the “Webern” divider, I found it: Philharmonia No. 434, published by Universal Edition. I ran my fingers over its textured gray cardstock cover and the glossy frontispiece that gives a facsimile of the first page of Webern’s manuscript, flipped past the introductory remarks in English and German and French (including a musical diagram I did not yet understand), and gazed at the opening motif: a descending interval in the oboe just a bit wider than an octave — B-natural falling 13 semitones to B-flat — followed by an ascending major third. In that figure, tumbling so slightly forward, is the germ of the entire piece, a startling economy of material that manages to inform every moment of the composition. I stared at the notes and marveled, half expecting the bird-like forms to take flight before I could turn the page.

The cashiers, in turn, kept one eye on me, or I imagined they did, as if I might suddenly fly off as well. You couldn’t blame them: no one else in the place was outfitted as I was, in heavy black boots and cheap leather jacket, a spiky short haircut and holes in my jeans. I had discovered punk rock that year, in time for the tail end of its Bay Area heyday, and I was dressed, as often as not, in some variation of the uniform I had on that day.

Punk might have been a fashion choice by then, but it was also still a social statement. For me and many of my friends, punk’s chaotic urgency helped us buck what we saw as the conformist society that surrounded us. Wearing the badge of punk’s circled A we could kick against the pricks of Reagan’s America, those stifling monochrome suits and pantsuits that tried to draw lines around our experiences and behaviors and desires. Punk tore down popular music so that we could tear down — or try to — what we were being told about how we should live our lives. This is every generation’s song, of course, but my generation had punk’s own rejection of “tune” to accompany it.

The Webern Concerto, when it was composed, was part of a similarly violent break with the past. Instead of the scales and leading tones and chord structures that classical composers had leveraged for more than 250 years, Webern used a technique developed by his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, that tosses all those relationships out the window. Like most music theory, Schoenberg’s “12-tone technique” is relatively simple, though it can be used to produce music of great variety and complexity. And it produces music that does not hew to hundreds of years of prior practice, but rather rethinks ideas of musical beauty from the ground up. Schoenberg’s music and that of the “Second Viennese School” (a group that included Webern and Alban Berg, another of Schoenberg’s students) relies on its own internal consistency to create a central gravitational pull. It turns its back on commonly accepted ideas of tension and resolution in favor of “atonal” music that can be jarring to those raised on the Western harmonies of the 19th century and before. For Schoenberg and his students, “dissonant” intervals like the minor second (an E and an F played together, for example), could be just as stable and pleasing as the major third that can more or less define a diatonic key (the C and E of C Major, say). Their music was met with outrage when it first appeared (one New York Times critic labeled Schoenberg a “musical anarchist” as early as 1913), but came to be considered a deep and legitimate musical language of its own. For those able to listen to it on its own terms, it can be as engaging as a Bach prelude, as thrilling as a Beethoven symphony, as poignant as a Chopin nocturne.

The Webern Concerto was all these things to me, when I first heard it. And, because it was so different from anything I’d heard before, it transported me immediately into a wildly more brilliant musical realm. (Enlightenment is often just that: things dawn on us and the world becomes brighter.) I could hear the control in it, the intriguing systematization. But I could also hear Webern’s expressive choices, the things that made this more than just a clever exercise in musical geometry: the six-note chord at the end of the first movement that is as dense a harmony as we’ve heard till that point in the piece; the slow and steady lilt of the second movement; the music pushing ahead sometimes and slowing almost to a stop at others; the contrast between the strings pizzicato and bowed. All this struck a chord that had first been sounded in me long ago. It married the kind of rigor I’d found in classical music with the kind of riot I appreciated in punk rock — an alchemy I hadn’t even considered before. In the Webern concerto, I heard chaos transformed — not denied, not assuaged, but raised up, integrated into something bigger than itself. The seeming anarchy of atonality made sense to me in a way that classical music did not.

This was a different kind of music, and it seemed to come from a place I had never really known before, a place I had not even known existed. It was a place without anchor, a location adrift, but one that seemed so familiar. There was something strong and settled to the music, but also something quick, as if it were built of ideas that were in motion and at rest at the same time — just as I was — the sound of perpetual motion mixed with the sound of home. Could I too find some way to bring these ideas together? Could I bring them together in my music, in a way that would let them stand peacefully side by side? Could I bring them together in my life? If writing music had been a diversion up to that point, now I began to sense a distant goal. So much was hidden in the place this music came from, if only I could reach it.

The score cost me probably seven or eight dollars, saved from an allowance or earned mowing lawns and raking leaves for one of our suburban neighbors; I was punk rock, but I was still 16, still living at home. I would soon go off to college — not far, just to Berkeley, across the bay — and there I would start to more actively question, and more actively reject, the paths and patterns I felt were being thrust at me by the parents and bosses and educators of the world. But back then I was still just a high school kid trying to find stable ground. The Webern score, light in the hand as it was, felt deeply substantial, my purchase of it like some kind of rite of passage. I wrote my name and the date and the city into it, as I had seen written in Scott’s copy of the score, and with this brilliant music playing in my head I stepped from the dim, cavernous store out onto 10th Street, a street far enough from the summer fog of San Francisco to be bright.

¤

Mark Wallace lives and writes in San Francisco, where he is a member of the SF Writers’ Grotto. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Salon, GQ, and many others. He is a music-school dropout, and co-author of The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Newspaper that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse (MIT Press). When not composing, he can be found on Twitter at @markwallace.

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