#wills mostly empty mailbox

[sorrowfulwill]

*Hands you a microphone*

Can you name some headcanons about your favourite characters?

oh my god anon you have no idea what you’ve just done

All of these are mainly gonna be reverse falls themed because If you give me the opportunity im taking it

1. Trans Mason gleeful. This is mainly because I also headcanon dipper as trans. It won’t really be mentioned in stuff about mason but it’s a thing that exists in my version of the au.

2. Will doesnt remember his life at all before being tricked into the deal with the gleefuls. This is for angst in later stuff because yum yummy I love angst

3. Will cannot see very well. I mean considering one of his eyes is straight missing and the other has a slit pupil permanently and can’t enlarge it makes sense. It’s not like he straight up can’t see he just has trouble sometimes seeing shit.

4. This one is more of a storytelling thing but I’ll add it here. The gleeful twins aren’t really villains. They’re like…main characters that aren’t good. Like Pacifica. They’re immature, spoiled, traumatized, bullies but not straight up villians.

5. This is also a storytelling thing but I made the characters older so I could portray them better. They’re about 15. They were originally 18 in my version but that just didn’t sit right with me at all. and also considering they would’ve had to be more mature and when I tried making them more mature it didn’t work. I’m trying to work on making my storytelling and art better for preteen characters so yeah. Absolutely not a shipping thing either that’s just kind of weird. (And by that I mean in the context of aging up a child character to ship them with an adult)

6. Will is a bit of an intimidating force with a sort of ghostly presence at the beginning but the more Pacifica and Gideon interact with him the softer he becomes as a character.

7. Will Sees the gleeful twins as both his best friends and his family. They don’t have as bad of a relationship in my version but the main thing they have in common is the fact that theyre all a bit terrified of Stanford and Will is like a comforting figure when the twins need it. They can be a bit unlikable and mean to the guy in their spoiled nature but they’re also immature teenagers who have low self esteem.

8. Mabel is still taller than Mason because lmao Little Dipper

And that’s all I can think of for now thanks anon

[ifwallscouldtalkkkk]

"Look, I'm not gonna kidnap you" - Michael Clifford Oneshot (COLLEGE)

Female reader × Michael Clifford

Mentions of alcohol, slightly tipsy (consensual) interactions, swearing, SMUT.

____________________________________

You miss your bus home after a night partying with friends. Luckily, you meet a guy willing to give you a ride home, and his playful pinky promise to not kidnap you somehow convinces you to accept.

The smut in this story is fairly short. This was my first ever attempt at writing fanfic back in 2018, and I was a bit scared of sounding stupid

____________________________________

Your shoes clacked as you ran on the cobblestones. You were so close to the bus station that you could see the bus driver flicking a cigarette butt onto the ground and leaving the embers glowing on the dark cobblestones, before taking his seat behind the wheel. You picked up your pace even more and frantically waved a hand in the air, hoping that you could cut ahead as the bus made its turn around the station back and onto the road. You cursed under your breath, mentally labeling yourself an idiot for staying at the party a couple of extra minutes to say your goodbyes to a friend who was too preoccupied with shouting random answers to the ongoing pictionary game to even hear you.

You skipped every other step on the small set of stairs to reach the platform, and when you reached the corner where the bus would turn, you started jumping up and down and waving in a feeble attempt to get the driver to stop and pick you up even though you weren't technically in the pick up zone. You could see him seeing you, it was a clear summer night and thus barely even dark! But the near empty bus didn't stop. The driver probably saw you as an entitled child who was too drunk to be on time, and maybe he was at least 25% right.

”Fucking bastard” you squeezed out through clenched teeth as you stomped around in a little circle with your head thrown back in frustration. Calling your parents to drive an hour in the middle of the night to come pick you up and let you off at your dorm was not ideal. You knew that they would do it for you, not wanting you to walk the 6 miles home. No, this was definitely not your plan, but maybe it was a bit irresponsible to plan to take the very last bus for the night. You stomped one last time and breathed out deeply.

”What the fuck are you doing, girl?”, someone called out in a humored undertone.

You swiveled around and your eyes landed on a car parked a short distance away, at the designated pick up- drop off parking area. The boy whom the voice belonged to leaned out the open window of the driver’s seat, with his arms folded and propped up on the edge of the window. His smug smirk felt hurtful in your frustrated state, but it brought you back to reality somewhat. You could admit that you probably looked like a child who didn't get a pony for christmas – and to be honest, you felt the same amount of betrayal.

”What a fucking jerk!”, the guy in the car yelled when you didn't answer. ”Where ya heading to?”

You donned a tortured expression, brushed out your skirt, picked your bag off the ground, and started walking home.

You heard the lone car start and you put a bit more speed in your step. It soon pulled up mere inches from you anyways.

”Come on, you're not seriously walking home? You obviously live a ways away since you were supposed to take the bus”, he said with the same amused tone in his voice.

”I'll be ok, and you're probably wanting to get home yourself”, you said, trying to politely reinforce the idea of him leaving you alone

”Look, I’m not gonna kidnap you, I pinky promise”, he chuckled at his own words but continued when you kept your eyes locked straight ahead. ”Girl, I’m guessing that you live on campus, and that's like a billion miles away. I’ll drop you off all gentlemanly at your doorstep and tip my imaginary top hat at you as I drive away, never to be seen again.” You stopped walking and he had to jerk his car to a stop along with you.

”The fact that you know that I live on campus is not very reassuring”, you replied.

He rolled his eyes and let out a little laugh. ”That bus-” he pointed down the road that your planned ride home had disappeared along a few minutes earlier ”-goes straight to campus. I just dropped my pal off here to avoid driving him all the way to the uni, but looks like I’ll have to go there now anyways.” You looked him in the eyes. The way he spoke elicited a strange amount of trust, and although a couple of piercings and a questionable hair color for an adult could be spotted under his beanie, he didn't seem like bad news. ”Look, the door doesn't even lock properly, I wouldn't even be able to kidnap you!” he demonstrated the faulty lock on the passenger door. You had to smile at the enthusiastic way he presented it.

”You promise you won't leave serial killer notes in my mailbox?” He lit up even more at your reply.

”Promise”, he said. You swung your bag up on your shoulder and reached for the door. This was in no way the wisest thing to do in the situation, but you were already overwon by his goofy charm.

You climbed in and kept your gaze forward, feeling the boy's eyes on you, and you caught yourself subconsciously holding your breath. You caved and looked at him when it became clear he wasn't going to drive forward before you gave in.

”Seatbelt.” he said with a parental tone. ”Can't have such a pretty girl making unsafe choices!” It wasn't as funny of a comment as his facial expression suggested, but he really knew how to lighten the mood. ”Michael.” He stretched his hand out to shake yours formally. You replied with your name and a firm handshake. ”Oh girl, with that grip, no one could even dream of succeeding in kidnapping you" he said, laughing at your overly stern behavior.

”I just hate limp handshakes", you smiled, rummaging around in your bag after a snack. ”Damn it I left my granola bar at home”, you muttered under your breath.

”Oh uh, I've got a bag of peanuts somewhere…” Michael trailed off, reaching over to the glove department to rummage through his own stuff. His warm hand grazed your bare knee while reaching and you tensed up at his accidental touch.

”Dude, eyes on the road!” you exclaimed and he chuckled in response.

”I thought risk taking was a theme tonight – oh wait, here they are!” He plopped a bag of salted peanuts in your lap.

”Wait, you're not allergic, are you?” he asked. ”Some risks are not worth taking.”

”No, I love peanuts, no worries”, you poured a handful out and put a few in your mouth. After a night consisting mostly of liquor and dancing around, something to eat felt heavenly.

Michael asked you a couple of standard questions about your studies, and you gave all the standard answers.

”I kinda miss studying. Never thought I'd say that." Michael smiled. His hand dipped down into the bag in your lap to get some peanuts, getting dangerously close to between your thighs. You stumbled for a few seconds.

”Um oh, ok really?” His behavior was so unlike anyone else you knew. He was so daring and sure of himself, but he felt so warm and fuzzy in contrast. Maybe the previously ingested alcohol skewed your judgement, but you couldn't help but find this stranger utterly charming.

”Yeah… I'm on the road a lot nowadays for work", came his reply.

”Oh, what do you do? Uber driver for college girls who can't keep track of time?” You saw one corner of his mouth pulling smugly upwards at your joke.

”Uh no, I'm in the music producing business.”

”Huh, that's fun. I wasn-" you didn't finish your sentence as a deer jumped out onto the otherwise vacant road from between a few bushes on the side of the long stretch of asphalt nearing the campus grounds.

”Oh shit", you heard Michael exclaim while swerving a bit and stepping hard on the brakes. The deer stared confused at the headlights before scurrying off towards the other side of the road. ”You ok?!” the boy asked between quick breaths. Your breath was labored too, but your eyes and mind were mostly focused on the male hand that had instinctively been placed protectively on your thigh while braking. Michael unfastened his seatbelt and leaned closer when he didn't get an answer.

”Uh, yeah…” your eyes now focused on his light, green, worried eyes.

You just stared. You didn't mean to, but you didn't make an effort to look away either. He had gotten so close. His left hand was on your upper arm in a protective manner, and his face was just inches away from yours. You didn't mean to stare, and you most definitely didn't mean for your eyes to briefly flicker down to look at his lips. He noticed. He must have noticed given the way you were both so focused on each other.

”Wa-", you began, but didn't finish the sentence. To be honest, you couldn't even remember what you were about to say. Your eyes flickered down again, when your vocal cords failed you.

‘Shit!’ Your mind blasted out inside your own head, but Michael didn’t pull away, or look alarmed. If anything, his brow furrowed deeper, all the while he was trying to calm his own breath. After a couple more sharp exhales his grip on your arm tightened, and he pressed his lips to yours quickly, as if he was taking a running start. You kissed back automatically before you even registered what was happening. You tensed up and felt Michael’s grip loosen as if to retreat. 'No no no', you were not gonna lose this moment. No way. To signal that you were on board with what was happening you brought your hand up to his neck. ‘He can't stop now’, you were aching for him to continue touching you.

He got more involved in the kiss in response, and your other hand found its way up to the back of his neck too. The hand that had previously resided firmly on your arm now fell to your thigh and snaked its way to the back of your knees, pulling you closer still. Your voice had given up any sort of attempt of self control, and a short moan escaped your lips. The man reacted to your premature excitement and his right hand fumbled to find your seat belt button. In a surprisingly smooth motion for the situation being, he simultaneously pushed his own seat back from the steering wheel, and pulled you onto his lap as soon as the belt let go of you. Both your hands braced against Michael's chest, while his own hands pressed into your sides. Your fingers curled to grip his shirt, and his fingers mimicked yours by curling too, his nails digging into you. You could feel your pulse going crazy. Michael's heartbeat was probably also going off the rails, because he lifted you off of him a couple of inches so that he could grow more comfortably in his pants. He looked you deep in your eyes the entire time and let out a lengthy exhale.

“Girl, I don't even know what to do with you.”

He grabbed your ass to grind you into him. You let yourself angle your head back in reaction to your core finally being stimulated, and Michael straightened up his upper body to nibble at your neck. You helped him by moving your own hips along with the rhythm, but his hands still stayed firmly on your ass. When you couldn't take it anymore, you reached down to unclasp his belt, but your fingers fumbled more than you intended. You hadn't noticed how much you were shaking in excitement before now.

The stranger turned lover stared into your eyes patiently while you unbuttoned his jeans, but as soon as you managed to slide them down his thighs he pressed you hard against him, almost as hard as he pressed your lips together. Your underwear starting to become soaked from the thought of what was to come. Michael shifted his underwear down to meet his jeans. His hands couldn't decide where to rest, alternating between your hips, your chest, and your neck.

When focusing on your hips, his fingers on one hand slid up ever so slightly underneath the hem of your underwear, and his touch left you grinding harder into his thigh. You could tell that Michael knew how wet you were, your panties practically gliding around. His fingers found your hemline once more, and he slowly let his fingers follow the leg seam downwards. He let two fingers slip between you and the fabric to rest right outside your entrance for what felt like several minutes, but then inserted them forcefully when your whimpers became more desperate. He groaned too, from getting to feel you from the inside and knowing what pleasures it gave you. As if this didn't feel explosive enough already, his thumb joined his other fingers and circled your clit carefully.

You felt your cheeks turn red from the blood rushing fast through your body. Feeling sparks in your lower stomach already was not something you anticipated. Michael seemed to understand though, because he stilled you from assisting his fingers’ movement. He had stopped his movements too to make sure you would focus on his face. The look of his eyes as he kept them locked on yours was piercing and the icy-ness of it felt amazing on your hot cheeks. He held one hand deep inside of you, and the other on his own throbbing organ. He slowly replaced his two fingers with his cock, letting you get used to him gradually. You sank down, and the pain of stretching was miniscule compared to all the pleasure in the air. Once Michael was sure that you were comfortable with him, he elevated his hips just enough to push your limits. He finally let out a well kept-in moan. The subtle hip movements turned more and more intense until the point where you could tell you would end up with leg cramps in a few hours. The car wasn’t gigantic by any means, but you found ways to make do. With your hands behind your back, you could hold onto the steering wheel for support, with the added benefit of letting Michael’s hands roam over your torso freely.

Eyes watering, heart pumping, and legs trembling, you could feel your orgasm coming closer. Both your moans blended together into an audible mess as the electric pulses took over your body. After your release, your body relaxed heavy against the steering wheel.

A long, loud honk sounded out before you could get the chance to lift yourself off in horror. ‘Oh shit.’ The motion of lifting yourself off and plopping down in the passenger seat again wasn’t graceful, but it was at least fairly quick. You sat paralyzed holding onto your seat as a dog barked loudly at the sudden interruption of the usual peace and quiet. A lamp lit up in a house a few hundred yards away. It took a minute, but Michael finally chuckled - his hands rubbing his face. You cracked a smile too, but your stiffened posture would take a few minutes to get rid of. Michael clearly had a more easily relaxed personality than you.

The back of his head lay on the head rest, and he let it fall to one side to turn towards you. The same all-too-humored look that he had when you missed the bus was painted over his face. He didn't say anything, and neither did you. Words didn't really help in this predicament. He just pulled his pants up to waist level again and turned the car keys. You two drove in silence the few minutes left to reach campus grounds.

He crawled to a stop outside of the main dorms, and turned his head lazily again. You had quickly gathered your stuff in your hands as he pulled in, and you got out the second the car stopped.

“Well, uh… Thanks for the ride”, you said politely.

“You’re welcome”, he replied just as politely, and with a rare sincerity.

You raised your palm up in a subdued goodbye as you took a few steps backwards, and then turned around to walk away. Your shoes on the asphalt click-clacked loudly in the silent summer night. You reached for the door handle, the cool metal feeling sobering in your grip.

“HEY!” a word sliced through the silence.

You spun around on your toes quickly.

“Hey girl!” Michael continued when he knew he had your attention. He was leaning out the rolled down window again.

“I know where you live!” The grin on his face almost bursting by the seams.

A huge smile immediately spread across your face too.

ifwallscouldtalkkkk MASTERLIST

[headoverjojo]

Hello, can I request a scenario of Diavolo and reader with pen pal AU?? I just think it would be interesting remembering how secretive he is, but I think there’s like a chance that he’d be willing to open up more to a pen pal yknow. Thank you 💕✨

Hello there! Oh god, after so much time... I’m so sorry about it ç.ç But in any case, I sincerely hope you’ll like this little fic! 

Pen pal AU: Diavolo and reader

(Under the cut for lenght!)

Diavolo still couldn’t believe it. When Doppio, more than two months before, had suggested him to try to open up a little -he, Diavolo? Open up a little?!-, Diavolo was so near to strangle him. And, well, this would have been terribly inconvenient, as he would have ended up strangling himself. Instead, he closed himself in stubborn silence, ignoring even when Doppio was trying to call him. He was too pissed: he, a man who was so obsessed by privacy, had to open up?! Sometimes he wondered how could Doppio be so silly and, at the same time, be a part of himself.

However, after having pondered about it for a few days, he found himself thinking that maybe, just maybe, Doppio wasn’t so out of his mind. It was true that sometimes he felt… alone, even if he loved dearly his loneliness. When he brought up the topic again, Doppio showed enthusiasm: the Boss was making the right decision! And, knowing his trust issues, he had found the right solution: a pen pal. The Boss could make a bond with them without actually seeing them, and without risking his safety: it was the most convenient deal.

Doppio managed to find a good pen pal for his Boss: their name was Y/N, and they lived in a city far away, so there was no risk to meet them. They too were quite a private person, he found out, and it was their first time as pen pal for them too. It was perfect.

Their first letters were awkward. Diavolo was too used to order around, and he felt weird to use a casual tone. Plus, he still didn’t know if he could trust them: they were a stranger, all in all. He was always scared to unmask himself, that they were just trying to lure him to reveal himself, to show his weakness, and then trying to attack him and bring him down… he was really careful and cautious, when he wrote. He never gave any hint on the place he was, or the weather, or his surroundings… anything that could suggest his position. Not even the most skilled detective would have found his house.

As days and weeks passed, however, he was more and more surprised to see that they never asked him for a more precise description of his place, or why he was using a post office box and not his personal mailbox. It seemed like they… weren’t interested in it. It seemed like they were more interested in his hobbies, what kind of music he liked, which books… their questions always baffled him.

He never thought for real about such frivolous things. He had ambitions, worries and fears, when he was young; then, he had a whole criminal organization to manage. He just… never had the time to stop and enjoy a little such casual hobbies. Killing his opponents wasn’t a respectable hobby, or at least not one he could externalize. He admitted, in his letters, that he didn’t listen to music very often, and that he hadn’t so much to read, and then he asked them for suggestions, curious, all in all, to see what they liked so much to the point to suggest it to someone else.

He listened to the songs they suggested to him, and read some of the books they loved. It was weird… it was like coming to know them deeper, in a more intimate way. He was used to decipher his opponents and, even more important, his allies from small details, in order to find a way to destroy or bend them, but this time… it was different. He wanted to know them not to possess them, but simply because he liked to know them.

Was this… friendship?

He felt a little jolt of excitement every time he saw that there was a letter in the post office box, and he always hurried Doppio to come home as soon as possible. He took control of his body the moment they stepped inside, and immediately opened the letter, reading it almost with greed. It was like a breath of fresh air: for a little while, he could smile and even laugh, reading their news. It was the most awaited moment of the whole week, a few hours when he wasn’t the feared and powerful Boss of Passione, but simply D., as he always signed himself. The man who liked Genesis and Sting and thriller books, who hated cold weather and loud people. Sometimes, he even found himself wishing it was all true, that he could have been just D. forever… but then, something brought him back to reality. A new alliance, someone who was trying to steal from him, a new criminal gang that was trying to compete with them… his world abruptly crashed his wishes, every time. He was who he was, and he couldn’t be no one else, no matter how much, sometimes, he desired it.

After a while, he even shared some really private information about himself: he told her about his Sardinian origins, and that he didn’t know who his father was. He never told it aloud, but… it was heavy, for him, not to know who his father was. He had even questioned his mother, during the time he had kept her imprisoned under the floor, but nothing. She had always murmured that she didn’t know who his father was. She had met him one night, and that was it. Nothing more, nothing less. Doppio never worried about these things, mostly because Diavolo made him not to worry about it; he and Doppio were, all in all, twins in one body, and he cared about his twin, in his ways. It had always been Diavolo’s duty to keep Doppio out of troubles and to elaborate painful and complicated decisions and information; feeling the burden of not knowing who their father was was his duty.

For the first time in his life, he was able to finally let these feelings go: he wrote that he felt like he was missing a part of himself, got lost with his father’s identity, and how, sometimes, this heavied on his heart. He wrote that he missed his homeland, sometimes, even if the memories tied to the island weren’t properly positive; still, it was home. The sea, the hard and direct language, the wind that always blew in the evening, the small and half dry bushes of tenacious mediterranean plants… it was carved in his memory. Yes, his life hadn’t been easy, but there were people, even if he could count them on the fingers of only one hand, that didn’t despise him: one was surely the priest who took care of him. The other two were three other old people: the guardian of the lighthouse, the undertaker, who mostly made sure to water all the flowers in front of the graves, and then an accabadora. Maybe his acquaintances were also one of the reasons he wasn’t so accepted between his town’s people… (A/N: an accabadora was a woman, usually an old woman, who was in charge to bring death to people who were so severely sick that their family required this kind of “service”, to spare their loved one of more pain. Some say that the accabadora didn’t literally bring death, but that was in charge to comfort the person who was dying ‘till their last breath, following ancient rituals)

He was tense the whole time he was waiting for their response. Maybe he had overshared… he was worried they could find out who he was for real -he knew it was a paranoid thought, but he couldn’t help to think about it-, but, at the same time, he was worried that he might have scared them away. He found himself… pained by that thought. They were the only person he had ever considered a real friend, and he just… didn’t want to lose them. He had never felt like that for any other person, excluding Doppio; every Capo, every subordinate, could be replaced in no time. But Y/N… they were unique. They couldn’t be replaced, and losing them… it was unbearable. His heart started to sink when, that Saturday, the day he usually received their response, his post office box was empty. Maybe it was too much for them, and they just decided to stop writing to him…

He couldn’t stop to think about it, especially now that he was back in his homeland. He had to come back in a hurry, in order to stop a group of kids who were so tenaciously trying to find out his identity… and, last but not least, they had his daughter with them. He needed to stop them before it was too late… Doppio, of course, didn’t know about the real reason behind his Boss’ orders; he just knew that he had to take care about a couple of “difficult subordinates”, but, at the right moment, Diavolo would have taken Doppio’s place, doing the dirty work.

Diavolo was dozing off a little, inside Doppio’s mind, when a buzz from his phone startled him. From Doppio’s eyes, he read the message from the post office: there was a letter from him in his box. Diavolo couldn’t help but to feel a sense of relief washing over him: Y/N had answered! So, they were still friends…

That news helped him to approach his job with a new strength. It shouldn’t have taken much time to finish those kids… he was Diavolo, after all, the most stand user of the whole world. Nothing could surpass his King Crimson.

He was sure to be home at most the next day. And then, he could have read their letter and breathed again for a little moment, as it always happened…

He couldn’t wait for it.

[wowbright]

Fic: Dear John

Klaine Advent 2020: worthless

Words: ~1400 words

Summary: Blaine gets dumped by Tina. He didn’t even know he was dating her.

Rating: Teen and up

Another vignette from my Mormon!Klaine universe for Klaine Advent 2020. This one occurs somewhere in week 3 or 4 of Kurt and Blaine serving a mission together.

My Mormon!Klaine/Klaine Advent 2020 Masterpost.

Notes: If you have any questions about cultural or religious references, feel free to use my ask box!

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“You have another letter from Tina.” Kurt closed the door of their mailbox and handed the envelope to Elder Anderson. Kurt didn't even need to look at the return address at this point to recognize a Tina letter. Tina wrote at least twice a week, and she was the only one of their correspondents who decorated her envelopes in intricate hand-drawn designs. Usually they were full of swirls and paisleys and cheerful, bright colors. But today's pattern was moodier, with large swaths of gray and black broken only by small abstract splashes of red that made Kurt think of blood, and then vampires.

“Huh. Maybe she's returning back to her goth phase.

“When was she goth?” Kurt had never seen a picture of Tina, but Blaine had tried to describe her to him, particularly her fashion sense—he’d said she was one of the more creative dressers in his Mesa high school, with a particular love of psychedelic A-line mini dresses and go-go boots, but willing to experiment with lots of things. Blaine had said he could envision Kurt and Tina bonding over fabrics and patterns if they had gone to school together.

“Our sophomore year of high school she got into Nine Inch Nails and wearing all black,” Elder Anderson said, skipping up the stairs toward their apartment. “She had a blue streak in her hair that my mother was not thrilled about. Of course, mom was even less fond of the mini dresses when that became her thing.”

“I can imagine.”

“Yeah. I’d usually have bunch of the kids from the Asian Student Union over once a month for a movie night, and the first time Tina walked in in a minidress, my mom actually told her that she had to cover her knees and shoulders the next time she came over, or she wouldn't be back allowed into the house again.”

“Mortifying.”

“Yeah. It was. I was surprised she didn't stop talking to me after that, but she said it wasn’t a big deal because she was used to Mormons judging her.”

“Even more mortifying.”

“Yup.”

There had been a time when Kurt would have been stung by a pang of jealousy to think about Elder Anderson hanging out with a scantily clad Tina. But it had become clear over the weeks that Elder Anderson didn't think of her that way. They’d been neighbors since they were little, and best friends for almost as long and, sure, they’d gone to a couple dances in high school together, but he’d figured out quickly he couldn't think of her as anything else than a sister.

Elder Anderson opened the apartment door. He dropped his satchel in the entryway. “I guess I can read it now if you want to get washed up first?”

“You don’t need to pee?”

“No, I used the bathroom at Josef’s, remember?” Josef was the investigator they’d taught that evening.

Kurt made his shower quick. When he came out, he found Elder Anderson sitting on the couch, Tina’s envelope in one hand and her letter in the other. But Elder Anderson wasn't looking at either of them. He was staring in stunned silence at a blank spot on the wall across the room.

“Are you OK, Elder Anderson?”

“Um …” Elder Anderson looked up with the dazed expression, like he wasn't sure where he was. “I don’t … I don't get this at all.”

“What? Is it bad news?” Kurt slid into the empty space next to Elder Anderson.”

“I guess? I mean, from Tina's perspective. But from mine … It’s mostly confusing.”

“What did she say?”

“Um. Here. You read it.”

Kurt took the letter from Elder Anderson’s hands.

Dear Blaine,

I'd much rather do this in person, but since your cult won't let you use the phone to talk to any of your actual friends or family for two years, I guess I'll have to do this on paper. And yes, I know that word will offend you, but sometimes you just need to call it like you see it. Normal religions let people talk to their friends.

So that leads me to the point of this letter. I think we need to go our separate ways. I treasure your friendship, but the romance part just isn't working. For a long time, I thought we could make it work. I figured we could have a multicultural marriage where we’d each bring the best of our respective heritages to the relationship. Sure, part of the compromise would mean me getting married at a younger age than ideally I wanted to, but I figured since we'd be getting married sooner or later anyway, fine, I could marry young because that's an important part of your culture.

But I've been giving it a lot of thought, and I just don't want to be married at 21. Because then you’ll want to start having babies, because that's another part of your culture. And it’s just too soon. And how would raising our kids even work? Wine is an important part of Jewish holidays, but your parents would have a freaking heart attack if the mother of their grandkids drank so much as a teaspoonful. Besides, I don't I want to raise my kids in a culture that expects women to put aside their careers and educational aspirations to become baby factories.

Which leads to the last thing. I've been doing a lot of work on myself over the past eight months, and I’ve realized how much I've been putting other people's needs in front of my own, and it's just not healthy. Particularly in my relationship with you. I was never happy with you dating all those other girls just because it was a requirement of your religion to do that in high school and you’d get in trouble if your parents found out we were going steady, but I played along with it because, again, I wanted to respect your culture. And I just don't understand why I put up with that. You weren't even a good kisser. I know you were holding back because your culture is soooo sex-shamy, but seriously, the couple times you kissed me on the mouth, it wasn’t any better than a peck on the cheek. You couldn’t try to sneak in even a little bit of tongue? Do you know how worthless it made me feel that you never let the rules slide for one single second and just kissed me? I mean, really kissed me. Like you meant it. I'm not even talking about necking here, although I've discovered that's pretty hot.

By the way, I'm dating Mike Chang now. It's everything our relationship wasn’t. He makes me feel wanted—which I would tell you more about but I suppose missionaries aren't supposed to think about such things, which, frankly, is too bad since you're in your sexual prime. He also supports my ambitions, and he's not going to pressure me to marry him anytime soon.

So, I guess that’s that. I’ll need some space for awhile, but hopefully we can be friends again when you get back. And I hope you eventually find a good Mormon girl who's a better fit.

—Tina

Kurt sent the letter down on his lap. It was a lot to process, especially the part about Elder Anderson being a bad kisser. “I thought you said you two were just friends.”

“I did. That's why I'm confused.”

“So, apparently she didn't get that message?”

“I … I don't know. I mean, I'm sure we talked about getting married when we were little and didn't know any better. And she did refer to me as her boyfriend sometimes, but I thought she was just joking. I told her a million times I couldn't go steady with anyone.”

“Huh. Well … That is a little different than saying you don't want to go out with her.”

Elder Anderson sunk his head into his hands. “I feel like such a terrible person.”

Kurt put his hand on Elder Anderson’s shoulder and gave it a little rub. “You're not a terrible person. Or I'd have to be a terrible person too. You know, Mercedes thought we were going out for, like, months without me knowing anything about it.” Of course, at the time and ever since, Kurt had assumed that the whole misunderstanding had only been possible because Kurt was gay. But apparently the same thing happened to straight boys, too.  

[anomander-dragnipurake]

Possessed Chapter Three: Mario

Without the adrenaline coursing through him, the pain in Luigi’s arm was so much worse. It throbbed in time with the rather horrid headache that was rapidly setting in. He wanted nothing more than to lie down in a dark room and curl around his arm in wretched misery. But despite how bad it was, King Boo’s only complaint was that the blood leaking from it and soaking into his sleeve and getting all over his front too ruined the look he’d been going for.

‘It’s not my meat suit,’ he explained. ‘So I have no reason to care if it gets damaged.’

Well Luigi cared and he would very much prefer it not be. He had no say in that though. King Boo didn’t even seem inclined to bandage his arm because he was just like that.

Instead he focused on E. Gadd and ensuring he did as he was told and freed all the boos in the three vaults he’d kept them in. As soon as they were all released back into the wild, Luigi got an uncomfortably strong sense of King Boo’s happiness about it and this situation as a whole. He was almost tempted to cling to it to escape his escape his misery more but didn’t; he didn’t want to share in King Boo’s joy about any of this.

Next came the destruction of the equipment that had captured and held the boos, including the Poltergust E. Gadd had been seemingly been in the process of repairing before he tried to use it defend himself with it. King Boo stepped in to do that himself, using a mix of magic and Luigi’s fists and feet and eventually even a crow bar.

He was ruthless, zapping, punching, kicking, smashing, until E. Gadd’s machines were reduced to a pile of metal and wires. It made the pains Luigi was already experiencing worse and introduce new ones. And King Boo didn’t stop at the vaults and Poltergusts either, he started going to town on everything else in the lab too, his rage fueled by a personal vendetta.

E. Gadd tried to protest a few times but King Boo wasn’t listening, he gave up when King Boo threatened to kill him if he didn’t shut up. Polterpup stayed by him, always placing himself between him and King Boo growling ferociously whenever the latter moved too close. Overall, it was bad, stressful time for everyone except for King Boo.

“There, you’re done” E. Gadd said what felt like forever later when King Boo’s anger seemed to finally be spent and everything in the lab had been reduce to little more than piles of rubble. “Now release him.”

Panting a little from exertion, King Boo turned to face him with a grin, resting the crowbar against Luigi’s shoulder. “When did I say I was going to do that? I don’t think I even implied it as a possibility.”

E. Gadd gasped and glared. “But… you can’t… You got what you…”

“He’s my puppet, I’m not giving him up.” Lifting his chin, King Boo tossed the crow bar to the side and started for the exit. “Lucky for you though, I’ve decided to let you live. Leaving you alive after wrecking your lab, destroying your life’s work, unable to take revenge against me without hurting your friend even more than he’s already hurting is better vengeance anyway.” ‘If he attacks, I’ll change my mind though, I don’t like disrespect.’

Thankfully, E. Gadd just muttered a few more attempts at a protest that King Boo ignored completely. He followed King Boo out and to the car, only giving up when King Boo slammed the car door shut.

‘Let’s go pay Mario a visit now, huh?’ King Boo said as he backed out of the driveway, running over E. Gadd’s mailbox in the process.

Just when things seemed they couldn’t get any worse too. … Please don’t. But… no amount of begging would convince King Boo to change his mind. He only took pleasure in it and thus… Luigi didn’t even try very hard. … King Boo laughed out loud about that.

 -

By the time they reached Peach’s Castle, Luigi was tired enough that he probably would’ve been able to fall right asleep even with the pain in his arm. The bright sunlight as King Boo walked his body through the courtyard hurt his eyes and made him feel unwell – part of that might be blood loss though. Though it was nothing compared to the dread growing in him at the thought of Mario seeing him like this; a pitiful sorry state, actively violated by King Boo.

What was Mario going to do or think or say? Would he believe that this was Luigi’s fault somehow? How disgusted would he be? Would he even…

“Luigi?” It was a toad, he approached King Boo and Luigi hadn’t even noticed.

“I’m looking for Mario,” King Boo said, attempting to speak like Luigi.

“What’s up with the uh…” Toad trailed off, gesturing vaguely at his face. “And why are you dressed like that? And what happened to your arm? That’s not… blood is it? I don’t like blood.”

King Boo held back a sigh of annoyance. “I-I need to talk to Mario. It’s important. Do you know where he is?” His imitation wasn’t the worst in the world but with everything else it shouldn’t be at all convincing. … Unfortunately, the castle toads had never paid much attention to Luigi so this one looking like he believed it was not much of a surprise.

“Uh… uh… I’m not sure. Probably in the castle somewhere, maybe his room. You uh… should probably get that looked at if it is blood… it doesn’t look good.” At least it wasn’t actively bleeding anymore though, right?

“Yeah, sure, I’ll do that.” King Boo turned away to start for the castle again. ‘Toads are annoying, how do you put up with them?’

Luigi should respond in defense of the toads but considering how that one had just mostly ignored the fact that something was very blatantly wrong here he wasn’t even really sure he wanted to. And he lacked the energy to really try anyway.

As always, the door to the castle was unlocked. The toads guarding it reacted to Luigi’s current appearance much the same way the first one had, letting King Boo enter with little questioning. Ugh! How did they not see the crown and think ‘King Boo’? They’d never been the smartest folk around but surely they couldn’t be that stupid? … Then again though, other than the toads who’d come to the hotel with Peach, none of the castle toads had ever seen King Boo so maybe they just didn’t know.

‘Or maybe they just hate you. It wouldn’t surprise me.’ King Boo smirked as he strode freely into the castle.

Maybe you should just shut up.

King Boo laughed internally. ‘Oh, getting angry now, huh? Sure did take a while.’

Luigi refused to respond. Everything he did or said only ever seemed to give King Boo cause to taunt him some more. So… he was just going to stop thinking for a while instead. … Too bad that was really hard to do.

The entrance hall seemed to be empty. So were many of the rooms and halls except for the occasional toad. Most were too busy to pay King Boo much mind but the ones that did, all believed his only half decent Luigi impersonation, expressing nothing but concern for his obviously sorry state. None of them knew where Mario was though, that was a relief.

Maybe Mario was out somewhere doing something with Peach or Yoshi or anyone else. Hopefully wherever he was, he’d stay there until something happened and King Boo was no longer a problem. … What were the chances of that happening though? … King Boo’s response to that thought was a hearty laugh.

After searching half the castle, they ended up in the entrance hall again. Before King Boo could start for the other half, the sound of the entrance door opening drew his gaze. … It was Mario!

‘Finally!’ King Boo was utterly delighted. Luigi was utterly the opposite.

Mario had spotted him too, pausing for a second before coming further in. “Luigi?” His brows were furrowed with worry as he came closer. “Toad told me you were looking for me. Are you… okay?”

No, Luigi was not okay. He’d never been less okay in his entire life. He desperately wanted to tell Mario that and... he desperately wanted Mario to save him.

King Boo laughed out loud, twisting Luigi’s face into an evil grin. “Hey Mario, it’s been a while. Though really, I don’t know how long it’s been, it’s hard to keep track of time while in captivity.”

Only a few feet away now, Mario stopped, his face hardening. “Who are you? And why do you look so much like my brother?”

“Can’t you guess based off the crown?” King Boo gestured to it. “And I look like your brother because in a way I am.”

No, you’re not!

Mario was silent for a few seconds before it seemed to click. “King Boo?”

“Yup!”

Mario rushed forward to grab Luigi by his shirt front. The look on his face said he wanted to punch King Boo and King Boo was going to let him. “What did do you do to him?”

“Nothing actually, well, other than steal his meat suit anyway.”

Mario’s grip loosened as he stepped back, a look of horror coming over his face. “Is he… if you…”

“Nah, he’s still in here.” King Boo winked as he tapped the side of his head. “Which is the whole point of this. You can’t do anything to me without hurting your bro even more than you’re going to be hurting me. It’s brilliant, isn’t it? I should’ve thought of this a long time ago instead of trusting Helen to do anything with her stupid hotel.” He did not like Helen, her obsession with him made him uncomfortable. … If only Luigi could do something with that knowledge or at least find it funny. “This is better vengeance anyway, don’t you think?”

Mario opened his mouth but failed to say anything for several seconds. “Why… just why?”

“Because I can and because I wanted to.”

Luigi willed Mario to run away now before King Boo could hurt him or worse. He’d have a better shot at fighting back than E. Gadd had but unable to fight back properly King Boo might still be able to…

Please, you’ve had your fun, please just leave now. Don’t… don’t hurt him… please. Luigi wasn’t even begging to be let go, he just didn’t want to watch and feel as his hands were used to hurt the people he loved. He wouldn’t be able to take that, it was too much.

King Boo was absolutely delighted with both the look of useless fury on Mario’s face and with Luigi’s desperate begging. He’d won, he was finally victorious over his enemies at last. No more would boos be sucked up into vacuums or bullied. He’d done what no other person had ever done before, he’d utterly defeated the Mario bros. And now he was going to have a little fun with that.

No… please don’t. Luigi pulled his mind away from King Boo’s thoughts as much as he could but they were too intense to get away from completely. Please don’t hurt him.

King Boo took a single menacing step towards Mario and… Something hit the back Luigi’s head with a loud bang, bringing an intense flash of pain followed by blessed nothing.

***

Mario gaped as Luigi’s body crumbled to the floor in a heap. He’d seen Peach sneaking up on King Boo from behind but he hadn’t expected her to whack him with a frying pan.

“That’s my bro,” he said gesturing uselessly at his poor brother who’d already clearly been through so much.

Peach nodded as she lowered the frying pan. “I know. But we needed to stop King Boo before he did something or before he left, bringing Luigi with him.” Yes, but surely there were less violent ways to do that. “So I knocked him out. Now all we have to do is take him to the doctor so she can look at his arm and uh… maybe head now too. And then we’ll lock him in a cell until we figure out how to get King Boo out of him.”

Mario could only groan. While that was a good plan and the only one they really had, it meant Luigi would most likely suffer even more. Why couldn’t there be a fix now?

“Come on,” Peach said as she put the pan away and crouched down to pull Luigi into a more upright position by his arms. “I need your help lifting him.”

Before obeying, Mario bent down to grab King Boo’s crown. It was much smaller now but still obvious. Maybe removing it would… Nope, it wouldn’t budge no matter how hard Mario pulled on it. So it did seem to be tied to his possession of Luigi’s body somehow but not in a way that made it any easier to fix.

“It’ll be okay,” Peach whispered as Mario gave up on that. “We’ll fix this, I promise.”

Feeling a bit choked up, Mario could only nod his thanks. Hopefully for Luigi’s sake, she was right.

 -

While the castle doctor was patching up Luigi, Mario called E. Gadd. Surely if anyone knew how to fix this, it’d be him.

“Mario,” he almost shouted into the phone as soon as he picked it up. “Watch out for Luigi he’s…”

“Possessed by King Boo,” Mario interrupted. “You knew?” And didn’t think to call and share that news, really? It’s not like Luigi was his baby brother or anything, so why would he need to know something like that?

“Well uh… now that I think about, I should’ve called to tell you but uh… my lab’s in a bit of state.” He was too busy cleaning his lab to… “King Boo was rather thorough in destroying everything…” Oh. “… more than just the boo stuff too which wasn’t part the deal. Neither was freeing Luigi like I thought… hoped. He left me alive though so… there’s that. … I should’ve called.”

“What happened?”

“Well, Booigi came to my lab and tried to kill me. He would’ve succeeded if Polterpup hadn’t jumped him. Then he said he’d let me live, if I freed his boos and destroyed the boo vaults but he destroyed everything else too and I watched because… there was nothing I could do and I thought maybe he’d let Luigi go after he got what he wanted but he didn’t and…” He made a wordless sound of frustration accompanied by the sound of his fist banging something metal.

With a sigh, Mario informed him on what was happening over here and the general plan which relied heavily on him. Everything in his lab being destroyed didn’t bode well for their plans though but it was still all they had.

E. Gadd hemmed and hawed for a few seconds after Mario finished talking. “Well, with my lab the way it is, I can’t guarantee anything but I’ll try. It might take a while though.” That… wasn’t surprising. Hopefully Luigi could hold on for a while longer.

[artificialqueens]

Time is an illusion, but one that means a lot (Gigi/Jackie) - Thorpe

A/N: Another fic I wrote at 4 a.m. and, actually, it might be my new favourite one. Thank you to my lovely beta, Freyja, for having the patience for my whining and teaching me about time. But a girl has to have a moral spine, so it’s 9.30 and not 9:30, and the English language can suck it.

Summary: Gigi couldn’t care less about the passage of time, but Jackie cares a lot, and they’re in love, so Gigi is trying. Very domestic. Very fluffy.

Gigi barely has any concept of time. If it wasn’t for Jackie, they’d be running late on every other occasion, and that would probably be the only consistency the world could count on when it came to them. Thankfully, there’s Jackie, and it’s the consistency they’re very pleased to lean on. There’s Jackie, with his primness and properness and professionalism, and enough patience to share all of that. He’s making Gigi more mindful of the passage of time - well, he’s trying to. And Gigi knows that actions are more efficient than words when they want to make sure Jackie feels appreciated, so they’re trying, too.

They learn that between 2 and 3 a.m. Jackie is kind and patient, but above all - he’s steady on his legs when Gigi’s own get wobbly. “Careful, baby Geeg,” he says, alongside a playful jab about needing to go to the gym more if Gigi insists on being the lightweight between the two of them. Half-past Jackie is always more than o’clock Jackie, so in the early morning hours racing with dawn he’s caring and doting and adorably standing in the doorway, trying to gauge if there are more pillows needed or less pillows needed. In Gigi’s opinion, the only thing needed is him by their side, but that gets fixed pretty fast usually. 

If a 4 a.m. Jackie is missing, that’s okay. His side of bed is still warm, the coaster on his bedside table is empty, and the duvet is crumpled in an inviting way that speaks of temporarity. Not even a deviation from the norm - just a lapse that neither of them will remember in the morning. Sometimes they put an effort into staying awake until Jackie is back, a glass half filled with water in hand and lips still slightly wet when he finds his favourite place on Gigi’s head. Most of the time Gigi fails, but they still wake up in each other’s arms, so no one’s complaining, really. But if a 5 a.m. Jackie is missing, that means trouble. It makes Gigi jerk awake and fumble with the covers. There’s cold air against their shins, which makes them grimace, and smell of smoke, which makes them frown, and there’s a single source of light coming from the tip of Jackie’s cigarette, which makes them sigh and go to embrace Jackie from behind, and stay like that until he’s ready to talk. But they still prefer that to the nights when there’s no cold air and no smoke, and what they follow are the faint sounds of crying coming from the couch.

Neither of them is a morning bird. Well, that’s a stretch, and the price of trading “I” for “we” - Jackie used to be a morning bird, but he’s been enjoying it vastly less since he started associating sleeping in with waking up to Gigi’s lazy smiles. (Gigi has never been a morning bird, never aspired to be one, even, so they’re yet to find out what a 6 a.m. Jackie is like.) A 7 a.m. version of Jackie gets shushed and coaxed into laying back down with clumsy kisses and caresses. To be honest, Gigi isn’t that sure of what the most effective strategy is, because who can be sure of anything at 7 a.m., but they’re clearly doing something right, because it works. 

An 8 a.m. Jackie is a bit more assertive. He gets too hot under the sheets and another body, and he’s already checked his calendar, which serves as a good motivation. Gigi tries to draw it out. After all, a half-past Jackie is more than an o’clock Jackie, and his favourite tactics usually contain Gigi’s blood rushing south, Jackie’s lips following with just a kiss and a half of a delay. On a good day, 9 a.m. Jackie will be communicating in moans and “yes, right the- ah, oh my god, so fucking good, Gig”. And don’t get them started on a 9.30 Jackie in the shower - on the good days, of course. The best of them. 

10 a.m. Jackie seems a few hours ahead of Gigi. Or weeks. He gets pragmatic - he has his mailbox checked and his phone in hand, on a call with his agent. He’s also left Gigi their coffee on the table, and they’re slowly sipping it, following the Canadian with their eyes, wondering when did he manage to make it and whether it was before or after he got dressed. Again, no concept of time, but they’re trying. They get breakfast ready, because Jackie may be teaching them to put on a handwatch like perfumes and Instagram filters, but they’re the one teaching him to let seconds pass under the radar and find the time for himself between the minutes passing in quiet, little steps. Make it instead of minding it. Still, those are the good days.

Usually, good days are exactly the ones they’re having, but building a life together is more complicated than maths prepares you for, and one plus one equals something weirdly shaped when it’s four arms and four legs and two hearts and an unspecified integer number of quirks and habits, and it’s never odd, but making it even is not always the easiest task. So sometimes those other days happen as well. Perhaps they would happen less if Gigi could say how much the good ones mean, but there are only so many things they can be doing simultaneously, so they pick up on the restlessness that comes with quarters to, and balancing on that delicate perimeter takes up enough attention to push holding an actual conversation out of the focus. 

The restlessness is always there, buzzing under his skin, making Jackie almost vibrate as he’s responding in hums while checking if he took everything he’s going to need before leaving. It’s quieter in the mornings, unless it’s almost 11 and Jan is late to their brunch. But mostly it’s quieter, and Gigi knows that it’ll come out as purring when he makes Jackie’s tea just like he likes it quarter to breakfast, and also that a seismograph would go crazy if it was next to Jackie when his call time is in fifteen, and the staff of the venue still don’t know how to play his music. They’re figuring out how to push the right buttons, taking notice of the way Jackie’s fingers start tapping to the rhythm of the song he’s performing that night and handing him the razor, because, apparently, it’s time to shave, feeling all smug at the surprised, but impressed look they get. But it comes with time, like everything else, and that is the tricky part, obviously. 

A 12 o’clock Jackie is a delight. Corny and witty, making smart word plays and stupid puns, and always winning their playful arguments. Gigi adores him for that, even when they pretend they don’t. He’s charming and gleeful on Cameo, and it’s clear as day why everyone loves him, even though he himself has no idea. Gigi tells him sometimes, tries to explain, and he gets flustered. It’s adorable. They’re absolutely gone for Jackie, and at 12 it feels like too much, but in a good way. If they could, they would hold him tight in their arms and cover his face in kisses and play with his hair and just keep him close and never let go. They can’t, clearly, but Jackie is usually in a good mood at noon, and so they get away with a lot. 

Afternoon Jackie is still a blur. Gigi does their best at dissecting that, but it’s a work in progress. They entertain the idea that they could take a year, two, five, or ten from now, and they’d still have plenty of time to put the pieces in order. Gigi may not have much of a concept of time, but they’ve always had a clear idea when it came to what they wanted, and it’s that they get it. There are no serious promises yet and betting on stars offers only so much certainly, but they know they want Jackie, and that’s something he is very willing to give. So they take it slow, unraveling Jackie. So far they’ve discovered that when they get jealous of Jackie’s attention at 4 p.m., he’s merciless. He teases Gigi and makes them worked up, only to leave them flushed and with lips bitten, because it would kill Jackie to be late, even though it kills Gigi in the process. But then again, they guess it’s less 4 p.m., and more Jackie in general, in his devastatingly hot ways. Alright, maybe Gigi being inhumanly gone for Jackie is less of an hour thing as well. 

But his favourite Jackie is an evening Jackie. It’s 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. and he’s on the stage, loving every second of it. The crowd eats it up - it always does - and throws banknotes at him almost as effectively as Gigi. Sometimes he’s with Chelsea, sometimes with Brita, sometimes by himself, but he’s always beaming, and it makes Gigi’s heart soar. They love performing, they do, but the more time they spend with Jackie, the more they realise nothing can match the way their head spins when Jackie gets off the stage and kisses them, hard and fast, like adrenaline and sweat. They know they’re being petty, but on the nights their gigs overlap they always pout and groan that the tips better make it up to them. Gigi makes good money in clubs, but they’re yet to find out what amount of tips makes missing out on Jackie’s show worth it. They are being petty, but Jackie laughs and understands, and sometimes he can’t make it at 9 p.m., but he gets there at half past, so he’s even more encouraging, and his eyes don’t ever leave Gigi’s body for a second. A 10 p.m. Jackie is fun, chatting with his friends, his arm firmly planted around Gigi’s waist, and if it disappears, it’s never for long. An 11 p.m. Jackie starts making aunt jokes, but he really would prefer to be on his way to their bed by now. Gigi squeezes his hand and goes around saying his goodbyes, even though Jackie assures them they don’t have to. Gigi just nods and kisses him sweetly - mind already made up - sometimes adding an exaggerated, breathy plea for Jackie to take them home. And a wink, just for a good measure. 

They get home at midnight, and a 12 a.m. Jackie is as much of a cuddlebug as Gigi is in the mornings. They love it. They rush through their skincare routine, maybe skipping a step on their way, but it’s easy to excuse when as soon as they get into the bed, they’re pulled into Jackie’s arms, their legs tangling together and goodnight kisses tasting of toothpaste. Then he’s out like a light, leaving Gigi to drift away to the sound of his deep breathing. They drag the tips of their nails over Jackie’s skin, thinking of the nights Jackie doesn’t come to see him, but insist to wait for them either way, and Gigi stumbles home at 1 in the morning to find him snoring on the couch. They chuckle and make sure to take their heels off before attempting to carry Jackie to bed, because if anything - they learn from their mistakes. They’re getting better at that, but Jackie’s never woken up either way. He’s dead to the world, so he doesn’t know that after he���s snuggled up under their duvet, Gigi lays next to him and waits until their eyes get used to the darkness, so that they can trace the strands of his hair falling onto his forehead, the delicate movements of his eyelids, his cheekbones, nose, and strong jaw. His slightly opened lips. Adorable.

A 1 a.m. Gigi is in love, but that’s definitely not an hour thing.

[otterbeesfanficblog]

When neutron stars collide

(Bakugou Katsuki x Reader)

EDIT: I HATE MYSELF 2020 

Part 2: When A Star Chooses To Shine

Part 1: Steps Before The Starting Line Part 3: Compare And Contrast Part 4: From Where We Stand Part 5: You Would Be Angry Too...

[One week later]

"No, Riji, you can't have my eyeballs." You deadpan to the man next to you.

"Maybe next time." He sighed with a smile.

Oddly enough, that wasn't one of the weirdest things you've had to say to someone, especially Riji. He was an older man, late 40's early 50's, and he was homeless just like you. 

He would oftentimes find things for you and give them to use, hoping to trade with you for something. That something could range from a simple smile to wanting your molars and your left kidney, but he never did let you give him anything.

He liked to pretend he was out of his mind like he was gonna sell you on the black market or something, but he was actually really sweet and giving. You weren't the only one he gave things to, there were plenty of people living on the streets, some were worse off than you.

He was your number one supporter from you signing up for UA, he helped you forge a lot of documents to get in and gave you his clothes so you could look at least a little bit decent.

Today you were walking with him to the for sale house to look in the mailbox, hopefully, the UA letter was there. You had been checking on and off the whole week, among other things. Riji wanted to come with you today since you both were also scouting for food, which happened to be coming your way.

Along the sidewalk you were on was a man selling takoyaki, which was surprising to you. There weren't many people willing to sell off the streets were you lived since ya know... homeless people. But you allowed yourself to watch him with a watering mouth and a growling stomach. 

The man appeared to be selling in front of his store, so he was walking in and out with things for his cart. You and Riji watched him disappear into his store then you both made your move, taking handfuls of takoyaki when no one was looking, then quickly walking away as if nothing happened.

You both waited till you were fair enough away to begin eating, but you sighed in joy upon eating your first one.

"Ah, I can't remember the last time I had something good that was hot."

Riji chuckled, stuffing two in his mouth with a hum.

"You said it, kid. Hey, you think the letter finally came today?"

You sigh, slowly eating more as you turn the corner down the street that you walked on with Kiri a week ago.

"Probably, right? It's been a week already..."

You both continued down the street, quietly eating your ... well, breakfast/lunch. You thought back to all the things you had imagined would happen when applying for UA.

You thought they would immediately know you were homeless and have never been to an actual school before, you thought they would have sent you away immediately. You had no records at all, not even a birth certificate. At least... not one with you.

You imagined by now they had already looked through the many systems they had and found you... 

You were 5 when you ran away from the foster home, from there you grew up alone on the streets. It was hard, so very hard. Everyone pitied you, looked down on you, some even tried taking advantage of you. As that young kid, you meet All Might, and you thought everything was going to be okay.

He said he would come back for you, said you needed to have faith in him and to stay where you were.

You waited.

And waited.

And waited.

As the years went by, you gave up on waiting. You grew bitter and angry, at All Might, at heroes in general, at the world. You did some foolish things when you were in that stage of anger, somethings you wished someone would have slapped you back to reality.

As soon as the anger dulled, you were left numb and wondering why you were even trying anyways. 

Your birth mother didn't want you, your birth father didn't want you, the foster home didn't care about you... the number one hero didn't even care about you. You just wanted it all to end.

Then, something hit you. Whether it was pride or anger or both, you screamed at the world to come at you with everything you had. You weren't going to give in, not when you went so far on your own.

UA, a school where they thought students to be heroes. 

You would become a hero, to prove to the world you were worth the air your breathe. You were gonna prove to Japan that they won't forget who you are, you'll have everyone know your name.

With or without approval. 

You came upon the house and you ventured to the mailbox, reaching inside, your fingers touched paper. You pulled it out with a shaky hand and looked at it, it was a letter and the letter was addressed to you... from UA high.

If you got it, you would have a good path to start.

If you didn't get in, you would make the world know your name somehow.

"Come on, kid, you got me fallin' off my chair in suspense."

Riji snapped you out of your thoughts, giving you a confident and eager smile. You nod to him and let out a sigh, you glare at the letter before starting it open.

You pull out the letter, it reads:

Dear Miss Uchukyuzo Y/n,

We are excited to announce that you have successfully passed the written and physical exams and have been welcomed to UA High! We would also like to congratulate you on earning the spot of second place in the examination results, with 42 villain points and 35 rescue points. With that said, we look forward to seeing you in April!

"I..." You stare at the paper in your hands, Riji looking impatiently at you.

"Well?! What's it say!?"

"I... got in."

You were suddenly off the ground and sent high into the air by a cheering Riji, you couldn't stop the smile that graced your face as you laugh and let Riji toss you in the air.

 "THAT'S MY LITTLE Y/N! I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT!! IM SO PROUD OF YOU KID!"

He let you fall into his arms one more time before setting you down and pulling you into a tight hug, which you return with heated cheeks.

"Ah, look at you! Going to high school! Hardly the little girl I meet 3 years ago, so grown now."

You looked up at him, feeling your chest tighten as he looked at you with a smile and glossy eyes. You shake your head and frown.

"Riji, are you-?"

"I know you don't like asking for help, Y/n." He stated, letting his fingerless gloved hands fall on both your shoulders, looking intently at you. 

"But don't let that pride stop you from gettin' off these streets, ya hear?"

You sigh and drop your eyes to the ground.

"Riji-"

"I mean it, Y/n." He squeezes your shoulders. "You're too good to be living on the streets scrounging for scraps like a common rat."

You knew he was right, deep down you wanted nothing more than to have a real home with real food and real clothes. But you also couldn't drown the self-hate either, at least not yet. 

Looking back down at the letter you realized you didn't finish reading.

It has also could to our attention that you have no prior school records or any emergency contacts, with this in mind we would like to meet with you and/or a guardian upon you receiving this letter. 

When you get the letter, as long as it is within working hours, we would like to meet immediately to discuss this. 

You then wished you hadn't eaten anything at all as your stomach flipped and churned in horror and fear.

You knew they wouldn't gloss over that, they couldn't. What kind of school would expect an unknown kid with no history?

"Kid?"

"They want to meet with me." Bringing a hand up, you rub your eyes and frustration. Riji looks at you with concern and a tiny bit of protectiveness.

"Why?"

"They're wondering why a kid who ranked second in their hero exam doesn't have any prior school records." You glare at the letter, crushing it in your hands and shoving it in your pockets. 

It was near early afternoon so you had plenty of time to get there, but you couldn't stop the groan that left your mouth.

"Damn it..."

"Want me to come with?"

You knew Riji would lie his ass of plus ten-fold and then some for you, as he had many times for you, but you shook your head.

"No, it's best not to lie and dig a deeper hole. I'll try and avoid lying but... if I need to..."

"Be careful, kid." Riji ruffled your hair, giving you a tight smile and thumbs up. "I'll be waitin' for ya."

"Thanks, Riji."

"Can't let that perfect spleen go to waste, that thing could make me rich."

"Aaannndd I'm leaving."

------

It was more daunting than the first time you came.

You weren't someone who was afraid to admit things like fear, anger, and sadness, but you weren't someone that would let that stop you anymore either. So, with a deep breath, you made your way into the school.

It was empty, not a single person could be seen walking around. You were sure people were here, otherwise, you would have been stoped at the gate.

"Can I help you?"

You jumped a little at the suddenness of the voice, but turning around you felt heat begin to rise to your face.

After your traumatizing experience with All Might, you had difficult opinions on heroes. But there were a few heroes you still believed in and even admired, and you were embarrassed to admit it but as a child, you may have crushed on them as well.

The man standing tall in front of you just happened to be one of those heroes.

Eraserhead.

His long raven hair ran down his back and some over his shoulders with a tuft in the middle of his face, his familiar scarf wrapped around his neck, and he was clothed in mostly black clothing.

You couldn't help but fangirl in your head as your heart raced.

Eraserhead, standing in front of you. He was so much taller than on the TVs in the shop windows. And, when you were lucky, you would see him sometimes scouting on night patrols.

"Look, kid, if you're just here to look around, you're gonna have to leave."

You let out... some kind of noise and wave your hand.

"N-no, uh, I'm here because well... I was asked to meet here?"

His eyes didn't change there uncaring stare but he did raise one of his brows. Reaching into your pocket you pull out the cramped paper, quickly uncrumpling it and showing it to him. 

You felt so dumb right at that moment, you were in clothes that were too big for you, given to you by Riji, slightly still dirty and handing him your acceptance letter that you crumped in a fit of anger.

He didn't take the paper, but he did lean forward to get a better look. He read fast, letting out a sigh and turning down the hall.

"Follow me and don't touch anything."

You quickly and quietly followed behind, having to walk a bit faster because of the leg difference you two had. He took you to an elevator and you both started to take it up the building, the elevator seemed to be a staff only elevator because he took out his phone and placed it on a sensor.

As you rode the elevator in silence, you let your eyes drift over to him once or twice... or three or four-

"If you have something to say, say it, otherwise stop looking at me like that."

You jumped at being caught and you bowed towards him.

"I'm sorry, it's just... you've always been one of my favorite heroes... I didn't know you worked here."

He glanced over at you, looking you up and down, then turned forward again, staring at the inclining numbers of the floors.

"Not many fans of me out there..."

"I honestly prefer heroes who are stealthy or work to protect rather than the offensive, front line showy heroes..."

You felt those words start to grow bitter with every word you said, thinking only about your anger towards the flashiest hero in japan who just happened to be named number one as well.

"Hmm..." 

That was his only response as the elevator stopped and the doors opened, then you began walking again. Then you had finally made it to a room, and looking at the label above the door you gulped.

"Principles Office"

"Principle Nezu is in there, you'll be having your meeting with him."

He then began walking away, and you quickly bow and thank him.

Turning back to the door, it was almost as if it was simultaneously getting close to you while also getting far away. With a shaky hand, you raised your fist and knocked on the door.

"Come in."

You shut your eyes tightly and opened the door slow, letting your head peak in first before fully walking in.

There, sitting at the desk was... someone. He looked like a mix of a mouse and... maybe a dog? ... Bear? 

"Come in, Miss Uchukyuzo. I've been awaiting your arrival."

You gently closed the door behind you and benched forward, slowly sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk. 

He smiled at you and rested his hands together on his desk, while you sat with your hands clutched together in your lap.

"It's so wonderful to meet you in person, miss Uchukyuzo. Before we started, I'd like to congratulate you on your wonderful work in the practical exam. Second place is no small feat."

"Th... thank you, sir."

"Now, to get to the reason I made this meeting." He pulled out a folder that had your name on it, which made you wince. 

Inside were only a few sheets of paper, but the one that caught your attention the most was one that had your name and birthday.

"Normally, we wouldn't make personal meetings like this with our students. However, you have no prior school record. Nor do you have any record at all, other than what is stated on your birth certificate and the files that state your ran away from your foster home at 5 years of age."

It felt like he was reading the book to your life, soon he was going to say how you have a love for dogs.

"Tell me, Miss Uchukyozo. Why should I let you into UA?"

This question was like a bullet through your chest, like putting salt in a wound. At first, you felt ashamed, it was the natural reaction to being called out for being homeless. For being someone people looked at as either a criminal or a rat.

Then you felt angry. Why should you feel this way? As if you had willingly chosen this life, as if you didn't have a reason to run in the first place.

"If you won't take me... I'll become the number one hero some other way." Your eye grew hard as you looked at him.

If this was his way of openly denying you entry into the school after telling you you were in, you were not amused.

"Everyone has a reason for wanting to be a hero. Money, power, glory. I've been pushed down, shoved aside, forgotten so many times... Well, not anymore. I'm going to be a hero that everyone knows, that everyone trusts. I'm gonna be the hero that is there for the people that the other heroes are 'too busy' for."

You glared at your clenched hands in your lap.

"I won't sit by in the shadows as a memory anymore," You looked up at him with determined eyes, your eyes glowing a bit from your quirk. 

"I will become a hero, whether you take me in or not."

He stares at you for a moment, his face unreadable. The silence was deafening and you were about to get up since it seemed like he was telling you that you were no longer at the school.

"Well, then I suppose it's a good thing we will be accepting you!" He exclaimed, a large smile on his face as he opened his arms wide.

You felt like you were just smacked over the head, you felt yourself sweat as you hunched over and your brow twitched as you stared at him. This was one hell of an emotional roller coaster...

"What makes a hero a hero is the drive you just showed me now, and the drive you showed during your practical exam. You not only faced danger head-on, but you also worked together with a person you just meet, and you saved many in the process."

You're eyes go wide as you think back to that day, how you didn't run away from the bot even as Kirishima told you it was pointless, even as people ran. You stayed.

"Heroes can come from anywhere, no matter their past. Since, however, this is your first time in a school, we will be providing you with a few things to help you along the way."

You watched him hop out of his desk chair, walking over to a cardboard box labeled with your name, then he set it on one of the couches behind you. You stood and watched him pull out a few things, just to show you.

First, he pulled out a small card that looked to have your name on it.

"This will be your temporary library card. Once you are in school, you will have your permanent one. Not only does this card work for the school's library, but it also works for any other libraries you decide to visit outside school."

Putting it back, he pulled out a paper and handed it to you. Looking at it, it seemed to be a list of what was inside the box for you to take.

"Now, let me explain everything in this box, starting with the books."

-------

You'd never felt so tired just listening to someone for so long, he let you go after explaining... everything, including what school was going to be like. You would never complain, you liked learning new things, but... You could have just read the paper seeing as now it was pointless.

You carried the contents of the box in a UA themed school bag which he had given to you, it was mostly grey with green stripes and gold zippers. You felt off-put by something that looked so... expensive and new. 

Granted, you don't really know how much a school bag costs, but you assumed this one wasn't cheap. 

You were currently staring at the thing you were amazed by most, it was the library card. For normal people, you assumed it wasn't at all hard to get one. But for you...

Either way, you were excited to put it to use. You had learned a lot from books over the years of taking care of yourself, you had stolen many books in your time. You put them back of course, but that didn't stop you from getting in trouble at one point.

Now you had an actual card, which to you was like holding pure gold in your hands. You wanted to tell Riji all about what had happened, but you also wanted to grab as many books from the library as you could.

As you made your way to the local library Principle Nezu told you about, you had two different voices fighting in your head as you walked the sidewalk.

One was excited for the good luck you had gotten, praising Principle Nezu for his kindness and thanking whatever god was out there that gave you the chance. You could finally move forward in your life, you could finally show yourself to the world instead of hiding in dark alleys.

The other voice was pissed. Why were you suddenly given this chance? What did that 'Nezu' guy think you were, a charity case? It was sick of you taking the things handed to you by people who looked down on you. He didn't know anything about you until you went to that school, so why should you allow him to treat you any different than all the other students?

It was this tiring back and forth of being excited and angry, It was the joy of something new but the paranoia of what it will bring. You weren't new to being tricked into things, it happened more than a few times when you were a kid, but it certainly makes you wary of 'good' things.

You were then pushed to the side by a sudden force hitting your shoulder, you stumble and just barely catching yourself before falling into the street. You growl and glare at the person who knocked into you.

"Oi! Watch it asshole!"

The person quickly waved their arms around and apologized.

"Ah! I'm so sorry! I don't know what I was thinking! I wasn't paying attention and you weren't either-!! AH! No! I don't me to say you were at fault! Just that, but of us were distracted! Though, I was less so!! IamreallysorryIwasjustonmywaytothestoreand--"

He started rambling, and you looked more closely and actually recognized him.

"Hey," You stop him mid-rant, catching him off guard. "Aren't you the green-haired freckle boy that got called out during exam orientations?"

If you looked closely, you could see his soul leave his body. His whole face went red and he covered it, poorly, with his hands.

"Y-yeah... that... was me."

You rubbed your shoulder and chuckled, thinking back to really how embarrassing that was.

"Sorry, didn't mean to bring that scaring memory back up. I get how embarrassing that was, I felt it from where I was too."

He nods while you could practically see sweat pour out of him in bucket amounts, he was still red in the face and you held back on calling him a tomato. Really, if it was anyone else, you would have walked off already. But he was someone that had done the exam, and you hadn't talked to Kiri since you left a week ago.

"I just got back from UA actual. This may be too personal since we just met, but did you make it in?"

He quickly stopped blushing and stood straight, looking you in the eyes, then looked down and spoke in a sad tone.

"I... don't know, I haven't gotten my letter yet."

You hum, nodding. You could understand his disappointment, it's a pretty big thing for you as well.

"Well, if someone like me got in, there's no doubt in my mind you made it in."

You give his shoulder a pat, and he looked at you with a blank but also calculating excretion. 

"Someone like you?"

You decide not to answer, giving him one last smile before turning away, then you stopped. Turning back you saw him looking at you expectantly, the back of your mind asking you why the few guys you've met already act like cute dogs.

"By the way, what's your name, or should I just keep calling you green-haired boy with freckles?"

His cheeks flushed as he looked at you with wide eyes.

"Eh! My names Midoriya Izuku!"

You smile, testing out the name on your tongue.

"Midoriya Izuku... Cute. Names Uchukyozo Y/n, but you can just call me Y/n."

You give him one last smile before turning down the street again, making your way as you mumbled to yourself, not at all aware of the teenage boy you just flustered to no end behind you.

"Now... where was that library again?"

------

"Well, well, well. Now, who's this fancy lookin' lady?"

You roll your eyes as you make your away into the alley, it was late evening already and your new UA school bag was not only filled with stuff Principle Nezu gave you, but stuffed in were a couple of small books while you carried the bigger books in your arms that you had (legally) narrowed from the library.

Riji looked you up and down like you were someone he's never seen before, so naturally, you play along.

You pretend to do hair flip since you were holding books, and you walked with your head held high and chest puffed.

"Why, it is I, queen who-gives-a-fuck the third. I've come from the land of stick-up-your-ass to announce I'm better than everyone, with my piles of money that I stole from lower class people to make me feel better about never being loved."

Riji put a hand to his chest as he gave a hearty laugh, patting you on the shoulder as he walked you over to the entrance of your 'home'.

"Well, kid, I'm assuming it went well. Seeing as you came back with more than you left with unless you stole all that. In which case, I'm proud of you."

You laugh and shake your head, looking down at and readjusting the books in your arms. 

"They let me in, they were just a little confused as to why I've never been to school before... they didn't ask, just... prepared me for what it was going to be like."

Riji smiled and nodded, closing his eyes and putting a hand to his chin in thought. 

"Ah, school. I remember when I went to school."

You gently set your books down on the ground that wasn't too dirty, then looked back up at him.

"You went to school?"

"Ha! I know, right? I don't look the part, but I went to school pretty regularly. That, of course, was before my old man married a troll who kicked me out as soon as I turned 18."

You leaned against the wall on your shoulder, looking at him sadly. You knew he didn't have the best life, no one on the streets did, but you also heard how close he and his father were. That he grew up just fine before his father remarried and he got kicked out, after that he couldn't really start out from anywhere since he had nowhere to live. 

It's hard to find a job when you had no home, as employers just assumed you were on the streets for a bad reason and don't want to hire 'thugs'. You knew from personal experience.

"Were you good? In school, I mean."

He rubbed and sighed, looking off to the side.

"Not really, I was average at best. But, my old man didn't care as long as I was actively trying."

"What was it like?" You began to feel intrigued. "I got about a 2-hour lecture from a mouse/bear/dog Principle today about what it's like, but... I trust you more."

"A what?" He raises his eyebrows at you, but you shook your head.

"I'll tell you later, what was it like?"

"Well, it's hard to say what it will be like for you, school's different for everyone. For me, it was just... routine. I never joined clubs or did anything in school outside of what I was told so, it was always really plain for me."

Hearing this made you deflate a little, you had hoped to hear something better than that. As if he heard your thoughts, he shook his head.

"But, I knew some people who said school was the best thing ever and then never wanted to leave. They joined clubs, did activities, made friends, made plans with those friends, some even became good friends with their teachers."

Riji looked down at the pile of books you had, leaning over and picking up the one on top. The title read, "Astronomical theories: Black and white wholes to time travel.". He gently smiles at this, weighing the book in his hand which had to be over 2000+ pages. 

He looked you in the eyes, and you looked back confused. You weren't really sure what he was seeing, he put the book down and shoved his hands in his pockets.

"School is what you make it. If all you do is the bare minimum, like me, all you'll do is drift threw. If all you do is complain about the learning or the studying or the people, you'll live to hate school. Or... You could find things you like, do things you like, make friends."

"Friends..." You thought back to Kiri, the sweet golden retriever like boy who basically saved your life during the practical exam. You also thought about the green-haired boy, Midoriya, who seemed to be a sweet boy as well if a bit nervous. You smiled at this thought. "Yeah, friends."

"Now, you'd better rest. You have till April for school to start, right?"

You nod with a hum and gathering up your books, you slide the wood board over and slide your way in. Turning back you saw Riji pulling the wood board back to its place, giving you one last smile.

"Congrats, kid."

----

The books were piled around you, 20 had been your limit which you were okay with. 

You let out a yawn, ripping a small piece off a small food box you had and putting it in as a bookmark. You crawled out and pulled the hood of the dumpster down, ready to sleep off the long day.

Completely unbeknownst to you, a pro hero crouched on the building above your small hidden makeshift home. His goggles laid around his neck hidden in his scarf so he could watch you clearly, making sure you were alright.

He sighed at the sight of you hiding away to sleep inside a tipped over dumpster, angry that he couldn't do anything. Pulling his phone out of his pockets, he pressed a few buttons before putting it to his ear.

"... She safe... for now. .. Yes sir... Teachers aren't supposed to have favorites, especially not when school hasn't started... I'll watch her, sir. But something tells me... her star has only just begun to burn..."

[haloud]

many times, many ways

a malex christmas gift for christi @michaels-blackhat, who inspired me into holiday fluff and who spent this month writing wonderful gifts--I hope you enjoy this one in return! Happy holidays, everyone!

-- ao3 --

An unmarked package. An envelope, more accurately, hand-folded out of plain brown paper and left right in front of Alex’s front door. Buffy is sniffing at it before Alex can stop her; he snags her by the collar, heart in his throat, but she’s close enough to nudge it with her nose. Alex holds his breath, but she just lets out a soft boof, then loses interest and heads back inside. Alex, however, can’t be quite so cavalier. It may not have exploded when Buffy moved it, but there are ways other than explosives that a strange package can fuck you up. He fetches a pair of gloves and a particle mask before he even touches it. A small gesture toward security, maybe, but it makes him feel safe enough to work a pocketknife under the tape and slowly pull the paper apart.

Alex blinks twice at what’s inside. Pulls his mask off so it falls around his neck and blinks again. Reaches out to touch it.

It’s…a Christmas ornament. But not any, it’s—it’s light in his palm, a tiny thing, a miniature of a poster he had as a kid, the one Maria smuggled into his car after school and he hung up in the toolshed where no one would see it. Alex holds it up. Dangling from a scrap of black ribbon, the little orange rectangle catches the light, gleaming off the black enamel picking out the singer’s little face and the Danger! At the Picture Show lettering. It’s cold when he clenches it in his fist, heart pumping a hundred miles an hour.

For a second, he’s seventeen again, and he has to laugh at the memory of that kid he used to be, earbuds stuffed in his ears, knees jammed up against the desk waiting for the first period bell to ring. He grins despite himself, turning over the paper again, searching for any kind of note or indication who it’s from. Rosa, maybe? Secret presents are definitely her thing, and she was the one who gave him his first DatPS CD when he was fourteen. Maria is the other person who comes to mind, but Alex hopes she would just give it to him in person—he doesn’t like to think of her being too anxious to give him something like this face to face, what with all the mending fences going on.

He smooths his thumb over the ornament’s glossy surface one more time, then puts it on a shelf for safekeeping for lack of anywhere more festive to put it. He doesn’t really decorate for Christmas; the holidays were only ever more of the same when he was a kid, with a thin, grotesque veneer of family over the top of it.

Things get even more festive the next day, though, when he gets home from work and finds another package, in the same brown paper, sitting on the porch steps. It’s bigger this time, three dimensional, and after a moment of deliberation, Alex picks up the phone. Guerin might laugh at him, but that’s a price he has to be willing to pay.

He doesn’t laugh, though. He rolls up in his truck, that, despite the circumstances and the vaguely tipsy feeling of fear lurking in his blood, Alex has to laugh at—there’s a sprig of mistletoe wrapped in bright red ribbon hanging from the rearview mirror.

Michael bounds over to him and says, slightly breathless, “What did you need me to check out?”

Alex waves his hand in the direction of the stairs. “It’s probably nothing. I got something similar yesterday, and it was fine, I just—”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, I get it. Here, let me.” Michael squeezes Alex’s shoulder, a quick, warm, reassuring touch, then takes a step back. Focusing, he narrows his eyes at the little package, then wings it in an arc off into the empty desert.

A second passes. Nothing blows up. Michael pulls the package back in.

Rubbing the back of his neck, he says, “Sorry if whatever’s in there broke. But whoever sent it to you should have known better. Fucking idiot.”

Alex lets out a long breath, forcing his shoulders to drop and his brow to smooth. “No, it’s okay. ‘Tis the season, right? It could be from anyone.”

“Still.” Michael’s mouth curls downward, like he tastes something foul, like he tends to look whenever he tries to make nice with Kyle. It’s exasperating. It’s also a little sweet, in a twisted way.

The box has the same wrapping, same tape job as yesterday’s envelope. It comes apart easily, and inside is—Alex pulls it out, holds it up.

It’s. It’s an alien, full-on little green man alien, holding up its noodly little hands in two peace signs. Wearing a Santa hat. Covered in gaudy glitter. And still intact—only one piece has snapped off, a little piece of red molding clay that someone clearly fashioned so an ornament hook could go through it.

After a shocked second, Alex lets out a very uncharacteristic giggle; then, face burning, he drops the little alien back into the box and glances up at Michael, who’s watching him with his head tilted and a shy smile of his own on his pink mouth.

Their eyes meet for a long, breath-catching moment, a spark jumping through the cold, dry air from one body to the next. Then they both look away, clearing throats, shoving hands in pockets, and looking up at the sky instead of back at each other, each of them so large in the other’s sight to block out the sun.

“Secret Santa?” Michael says, voice cheerfully flippant. He’s still grinning somehow. Alex wants to wipe that look off his face. With his own face.

“Something like that.”

“Next time try to get someone who knows you better than to get that touristy shit.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Michael leaves after that, making it both easier and harder to breathe. Touristy shit aside, Alex puts the Santa alien on the shelf beside the first ornament, and later that night, after tossing and turning for a little while, he grabs his crutches, goes to the shelf, gropes in Jim’s old toolbox for a tube of superglue, and hunches over the coffee table to fix the clay part, making it an ornament once again.

One is an event. Two is a coincidence. Three ornaments in three days, and it’s a pattern.

No brown paper package shows up the third day; rather, he finds the ornament when he checks his mailbox in town. It’s a little laptop this time, nothing special, but it still brings a smile to his face when he holds it in his palm.

Who could the mystery sender be? It turns into something of an obsession over the next few days, which see him receiving a log cabin, a beagle, and a beautiful handmade silver and turquoise songbird. It’s clearly someone who knows him now, and someone who knows him well enough to know his home, his pet, what he does for a living…it’s a narrow field, to be sure—basically just Maria, Liz, Kyle, or Rosa. He rubs his thumb over the beagle’s little painted nose while Buffy shoots it a suspicious look from the couch as he considers his options.

Whoever it is, Guerin must know, because since the second day, the ornaments have arrived in his mailbox or on his porch unwrapped or in clear plastic wrap if it’s raining out.

Of course, all the evidence could point toward it being Guerin himself. But…somehow, Alex can’t bring himself to believe it, if only because the thought of Michael thinking of him like this, over time, with dedication, makes Alex’s chest ache with longing to see him, to hear him, to feel him. Better it be some scheme of Rosa’s. It’s just…better that way.

The gifts keep coming. Day seven, it’s the Air Force crest; on the eighth and ninth days, he finds a sunbathing alien and a bowl of ramen on his front step. They both go on the increasingly-crowded shelf, though he shoots the ramen a nasty look when he puts it in place. Another point in the Maria column, considering last time he went to one of her movie nights, he was asked to put pizza rolls in the oven and managed to burn them despite absolutely following the instructions on the package.

The tenth day’s ornament arrives in a blue Tupperware container, just translucent enough to see the ornament inside, but not so much he can tell what it is.

He opens it and finds a ball ornament wrapped in strips of paper cut from dictionaries in ten languages he can identify, including all six he speaks. It’s sturdy papier-mâché, but Alex still holds it like it might shatter if he breathes on it too hard. Every line defines things like family, like love, like forever. He returns it to its box and puts it on the shelf with the others, but his fingers linger over the lid, because there are lines he hasn’t traced with his fingertips yet, and he can hardly tear himself away.

He goes into town later that day on a grocery run with words still swimming in his mind and his mouth fixed shut because he’s not sure what might come out. But no level of distraction or concentration could keep him from being blindsided when he runs into Guerin outside the Crashdown, their bodies catching shoulder to shoulder, Guerin’s hand on his arm to steady him—their collision almost knocked a big box out of Guerin’s hands, but he steadies it with a little help from his powers until Alex has his balance back and he can take it in both hands again.

“Alex,” he breathes, then clears his throat. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“I could say the same to you,” Alex manages.

Guerin shakes the box lightly. “Liz wants to surprise Arturo with the decorations this year, so I figured I’d offer my services. I’m the only one who can get tinsel into all the hard-to-reach places, after all.”

“Oh, that’s—that’s really nice.”

“Nah, I’m getting paid. Mostly in milkshakes and fries, but who’s complaining?”

They stare across the box. It’s been like this, lately, a small talk stiffness to their interactions, and Alex doesn’t know how to make it stop. But at the same time, he isn’t sure he wants to. It’s almost…nice. A couple weeks ago Alex drove by the junkyard just because he could, and Michael smelled like snow and pine and commented on the weather, and that brief exchange left the both of them grinning like idiots by the time Alex drove away. They aren’t lovers again, not yet. But they’re something. They’re getting there.

“Want some help? I’m free tonight,” Alex says, and Michael smiles at him, and that’s that. Alex comes back late, once the Crashdown is closed and Arturo is in bed. Liz and Rosa come downstairs to work on the decorations too, and more hands makes for light work, though Michael does most of the work without using his hands at all. They’re finished in no time. Alex plugs the lights in, flips the switch, and Rosa laughs, real and unrestrained and tugging Liz into the middle of the floor, dotted with multicolored puddles of light, twirling her in a circle. Sometime during the decorating, Rosa managed to stick Michael with a present ribbon, and it bobbles on top of his curls as he slinks over to Michael’s side to knock their shoulders together. Alex lets him, in the spirit of the season, and because every time Michael touches him his body goes weightless.

Now is as good a time to ask as any.

“So, Guerin,” he says, “I’m still getting ornaments every day. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that you haven’t told me, would you?”

Michael shrugs and grins that cowboy grin. “Looks to me like you’ve got yourself a secret admirer.”

“Secret, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

And before Alex can say another word, Michael is walking away to join Liz and Rosa dancing, whistling Let It Snow. He gets away from Alex that time, but before their little impromptu party is over, Alex manages to steal the bow from his hair, just glancing his fingers off those curls, so lightly Guerin doesn’t even seem to notice.

Whether he’s the ornament giver or not, Alex puts the bow on the shelf with the others. Just in case.

The next day, there’s no ornament when he leaves in the morning, and nothing in his mailbox when he checks it that evening, either. He’s—frustrated, okay, rather than sad, because what was the point? Stopping ten days in, what was even the point? It leaves him feeling untethered, without that tiny little thing to look forward to each and every day. Somehow, without even really noticing, he’d kind of gotten into the Christmas spirit. He even, feeling ridiculous the entire time, went to the pet store and bought a couple gifts for his dog, because he’s in a gift-giving mood even if he’s not sure he’s exchanging gifts with anyone else this year.

He shoulders his way out of the office, avoiding eye contact with the clerk, who’s surely noticed him coming in every single day, when he used to only check his mail once a week at best. Whatever. Now he has no reason to come back so often, and they’ve got plenty of time to forget him, like the way things should be.

He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he almost smacks Maria right in the face with the door as he leaves. She yelps, and he catches it at just the last second, tripping over apologies while she flaps her hand at him dismissively.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, Alex, really,” she laughs. Alex steadies her with his hands on her shoulders, and she tugs him to the side, out of the way of the sidewalk traffic. “I was hoping to run into you anyway. I have something for you.”

Oh shit. Anxiety spikes, and Alex blabbers, “Oh, shit, Maria, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know we were doing gifts this year—”

Great. Their friendship is finally finding even footing again, and Alex immediately puts himself in the red again by hitting her with a door and tells her straight up that he didn’t get her anything for Christmas. Batting a fuckin’ thousand, isn’t he. No wonder his secret admirer or whatever got bored of him.

“Alex, seriously, chill.” She tweaks his chin. “No presents is one hundred percent fine. You think I’m all about worshipping at the capitalist altar that is Christmas? Hell no. Buuut someone asked me for a favor, and it just so happened that I had something for you anyway, so here you go.”

She grabs his hand and presses into it a beautifully beaded eight-pointed star, red and white and gold. Alex gasps, and says, “This is—”

“One of Mom’s, yeah.” That wry, sad smile Maria gets when she talks about her mother curls up on her face. “She makes a lot of them on her good days, and her nurse says it’s good that she’s working with her hands. And Mom specifically said this one was for you.”

“God.” Alex swallows and grips the star as tightly as he can without crushing it. “Let me know next time you’re going to visit her, okay? So I can thank her in person?”

“Sure thing.”

Maria blinks rapidly for a moment, and Alex, understanding, doesn’t mention it. She composes herself quickly, and then Alex just has to ask:

“So it hasn’t been you the whole time, has it?”

“What, leaving you the ornaments? I am not that sappy.”

“Come on, there’s nothing wrong with being a little sentimental,” he teases.

“Uh huh. Sure. I forgot I was talking to the master of fuzzy feelings himself.”

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

Maria laughs at that and, hooking her arm through his, starts off down the street. “Now, we may not be exchanging presents this year, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make you help me with the rest of my shopping.”

--

The next day’s ornament is a classic Han Solo one, and if Alex lets out an undignified gasp when he sees it, Buffy is the only creature around to witness it. If he spends the rest of the day finding and watching the Star Wars Christmas Special, well, the same goes for that too, and his dignity is firmly intact.

The day after that, Liz texts him to come to the Crashdown, and since it’s a weekend he makes it there to meet her on her lunch break. The decorations look just as good in the daylight, if an inch or two less magical, and Alex has to duck his head to hide his grin when he remembers Michael very seriously placing a Santa hat on each individual alien in the place.

Liz beckons him over to a booth, two shakes and a plate of fries already in front of her. “Figured since I called you out, I could at least treat you,” she says. “On top of what I called you here for, which is….” She does a little drumroll on the table, then plonks an ornament box down on the table.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Alex bursts out.

“I know, right? I couldn’t believe it when I found it.”

Laughing and shaking his head, Alex picks it up. It’s a cat wearing an antenna headband so, so similar to the one perched on Liz’s head—the wrong shade of green, but still.

“I don’t suppose this is your way of telling me you’ve been leaving me ornaments all month, is it.”

“Pfft, no way.” Liz steals a fry from his tray and crunches it smugly. “Secret admirer, Manes. It’s supposed to be secret.”

Day fourteen is something delicate, so much so he’s a little scared to touch it. It’s thin glass, deep blue, and when it catches a light source it sends shimmering blue all around the room. It’s the day Alex stops trying to guess who his mystery gift-giver is, because now he’s been given light to hold in his hands, and it makes him feel—makes him—

Someone thought he was worthy of this. Someone wanted him to have it. Whether or not they ever tell him who they are, that means something.

His fifteenth ornament is the third one to come wrapped in a package, but this time it’s in an actual USPS shipping box, and it comes with a letter inside, in handwriting he recognizes.

Captain, it says, we got pressed into service again, and I was the unlucky bastard who drew the short straw, so I’m sending this to you, along with a warning that you fucking owe me…

The ornament is basic, a decently pretty white and silver snowflake. He puts the letter on the shelf with it. If the season is forcing everyone else into a sentimental mood, he might as well succumb to it too.

He wakes up on the sixteenth day with a bit of a sentiment hangover and lets himself lie in bed for a little while longer than usual, fondling Buffy’s soft ears and cradling this lovely, bittersweet feeling inside himself. If Christmas is the deadline for this whole ornament thing, he’s over halfway to the end. He takes the morning slowly, lingering over his coffee and over the view of the desert through his kitchen window, the high def white-gray limning of the world you get with a serious cold.

That day’s ornament doesn’t match Alex’s mood at all, but he still chuckles and shakes his head when he sees it. It’s another patch job like the Santa alien, but this time some sort of Valentines leftover—a traditional Roswell Gray holding a big red heart that says you’re out of this world!, with a handmade place for ornament hooks to go. It looks absurdly out of place next to everything else he’s accumulated, but he gives it its place of honor anyway.

He doesn’t expect his seventeenth ornament to arrive on the doorstep or in the mail, and sure enough, the pattern holds and it’s hand delivered at like ten o’clock that night. He almost doesn’t answer the door, but to be honest he’d left his leg on after work expecting just this.

“Ho ho ho,” an exhausted-looking Kyle says, shoving a box into Alex’s hands.

“Dude, did you drive all the way out here after your shift? It could have waited.”

“Nah, this is my one good deed for the year.”

“You’re literally a surgeon. Your job is good deeds.”

“Fine—my one act of charity.”

Alex bristles at that. “I don’t need—”

“Not for you.” Kyle punches him lightly on the shoulder.

Cryptic bastard.

“Go ahead and open it,” Kyle says, “My blood is eighty percent coffee right now, and I want to get home before I crash”

“You know you can stay if you need to.”

“Yeah, yeah. Open it.”

Alex’s eyebrows go straight up when he does and pulls out a shimmery white ball with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer logo on it. “You didn’t pick this out yourself. You asked me why I gave my dog a porn name the first time you met her.”

“Hey! I listened when you explained—” When Alex fixes him with a glare, Kyle gives in with a laugh. “Okay, okay, Rosa helped. Oh ye of little faith.”

Kyle leaves after that, with a quick hug and a Merry Christmas, and Alex goes to his shelf to put the ornament away. He hasn’t been keeping them in chronological order, more a sort of a…thematic grouping. The Buffy ball goes with Maria’s star, Liz’s alien cat, and the snowflake from his unit.

He looks up and turns away, casting his eyes all around the room to hide from no one the fact that he’s getting a little bit choked up.

Maybe he’ll buy some lights tomorrow. Or tinsel or something. No reason he can’t go in on the decorating, right? Why is he still holding himself back?

--

He doesn’t make it to the store the next day, or the two after that, three days that see him receiving a coffee mug, a UFO that’s supposed to light up when it’s plugged in, and a little truck hauling a Christmas tree.

He wonders if maybe that last one is a promise.

The pattern of hand deliveries every other day has been broken. But, in the spirit of the season—Alex doesn’t dwell on the fact that he never got one hand-delivered by Michael and instead chooses to think about the other thing that could mean.

On day twenty-one, he gets a glass teardrop that shimmers purple and golden, and on day twenty-two he gets a golden disc engraved with a tiny, perfect star chart.

The day before Christmas Eve, he opens the door to find an acoustic guitar.

As if he didn’t already know.

--

Christmas Eve dawns gray and dismal with the smell of snow in the air. Buffy trots around the yard in circles, lifting her nose every couple minutes to sniff the cold, and Alex cradles his coffee in both hands to keep them warm while he watches her, content. Part of him regrets that he never went and got more decorations, but it’s okay. This whole month—it’s been such an unexpected thing to be able to accept a simple joy into his life, to let himself expect a little, uncalled-for gift every day, that all he can feel at this point is just…peace. He couldn’t have asked for anything else. He didn’t.

Buffy barks, and Alex looks up just in time to see a familiar truck coming down the road, the bed covered with a tarp. Alex puts his mug down on the railing and regrets it instantly for want of something to do with his hands as Michael parks, opens the door, and jumps out of the car.

“Hey,” Alex says.

“Hey. Merry Christmas,” Michael says in return.

They just stare at each other for a moment, something that happens a lot when it’s just the two of them. Like they have to steel themselves to speak. Like they have to make sure that no, it’s not, it’s not the time to take that step forward and drown themselves in each other. It’s okay, yeah, it’s okay to just be here. Like this.

“Want some help with that?” Alex tilts his chin in the direction of the tarp.

“Y-yeah. Sure.” He stumbles over the word and ducks his head, rounding the truck to reveal what’s underneath.

It’s exactly what Alex expected, and everything he never did. His heart in his throat, he touches one of the branches on the tree, needles pricking his skin, sap sticky on his fingertips when he pulls them away.

“You get the other end,” Michael says, and they carry it inside together, a crate full of other decorations floating along behind them, Buffy pulling up the rear, eyeing it suspiciously. She settles in the corner to watch as Michael sets the tree up, hammers it into the stand, and positions it in the corner where it’ll be out of Alex’s way.

Alex hovers in the kitchen, making them both more coffee, hands shaking a little bit on the grounds, on the filter, on the carafe. The tree still takes up too much room. Michael takes up too much room. He always has. In this tiny house. In Alex’s heart and in his head and between his ribs. Michael pulls things out of the crate one by one and hangs them in the air around himself—bundles of lights, a skirt for the tree, multicolored balls and delicate paper snowflakes to fill all the spots left between the ornaments in Alex’s new collection.

Their fingers brush when Alex hands him a mug, and Alex lets the moment hang there. Skin on skin in the most casual, innocent way, but with Michael’s golden eyes so close it still manages to heat his blood, dry his mouth, cover him in yearning.

“Thanks,” Michael says hoarsely. He drags his index finger along Alex’s as he pulls his hand away, sending a shiver through the both of them.

Decorating for Christmas shouldn’t feel forbidden, but it does. It does, as they circle around each other, spiraling lights around the tree, eyes catching on every pass, Alex’s face so warm every time he sees Michael’s answering blush, on his cheeks, on his lips. Once the lights are on, they start in on the ornaments. Alex picks them off the shelf in chronological order, passing half of them to Michael, keeping half of them—like Mimi’s star, Han Solo, and the guitar—for himself.

“How did you manage it?” He asks eventually, fixing the teardrop to a high branch so Buffy doesn’t get any ideas.

“A friend who knows how to navigate Etsy, a sister with Amazon Prime, and a little bit of old-fashioned gumption.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Sure am.” Michael grins with satisfaction at the Valentines alien. Then he sobers a bit and says, “Hey, look, I’m sorry about the packaging the first couple days. I wanted to surprise you—I wasn’t thinking, and I should have.”

“It’s okay. You changed it up, and…yeah. It’s fine.”

“Thanks.”

A couple minutes pass in silence as Alex searches for what else to say. To ask. Why did he do it? When did he get the idea?

He asks, “What about the others? The ones you had Maria, Liz, Kyle, and the guys pick out? Red herrings, or did you just run out of ideas?”

“Oh, I had lots of ideas.” Michael presses his shoulder to Alex’s, coming in close to hang the star chart right beside the silver bird. Nudging him shyly, Michael says, “But my favorite one was the one where you got reminded how many people care about you.”

Alex almost drops the UFO at that, at Michael’s absurd honesty. He has nothing else to say, and they finish decorating the tree in peaceful silence. When they finish, Alex turns the lights off, and Michael plugs the tree in, and the gray day is dark enough that everything lights up bright like it would in the evening, all the colors of the rainbow.

“Fuck,” Alex breathes. It’s like a punch to the gut, happiness and disbelief and the unavoidable need to hoard this feeling, this moment, that comes on the heels of those feelings.

“So you like it?”

“Fuck,” Alex repeats, “Michael. I love it. It’s…I just…”

“Good.”

Michael, hesitating all the way, reaches out and takes Alex’s hand, sliding their fingers home together.

“I have one more ornament for you.” And he reaches into his pocket.

Alex makes a strangled noise when he sees it. Instinct tells him to rip his hand out of Michael’s and flee to the other side of the room to regroup, but he stays rooted in place, struggling, grasping for anything to say.

The console shard—because that’s what it has to be, just with gauzy ribbon looped and knotted carefully around one end so it dangles neatly from Michael’s fingers—shimmers in the soft rainbow light. Michael’s eyes shimmer along with it, equally as alien.

“I can’t,” Alex blurts. “I can’t take it. Michael. No. It’s—”

“No, no, listen, please.” Michael tugs on his hand like he wants to pull him closer, but Alex can’t—he just can’t—

He can’t be what ties Michael to Earth. He can’t be the sole tether that keeps him here, to the world that hurt him again and again, even if it’s the thing he wants most in the world, to protect, to hoard him like he hoards every sliver of a happy memory, where no one can take it away from him. That’s why he—months ago, when he most thought Michael was slipping through his hands, he gave him the console piece he found so he could go if he needed to. And now Michael tries to hand another piece back to him again?

“I can’t,” Alex says again, stuck on repeat.

“Hey, hey,” Michael fumbles for Alex’s other hand, and Alex lets him catch it, because with Michael holding him in place he doesn’t feel as cold. “It’s not what you think. I’m not asking you to keep me here, or anywhere, just.”

He swallows. He’s beautiful, in this light most of all. The most beautiful thing Alex has ever seen. Shining in every way, from the golden brushstrokes of his hair to the heart of him, who knew that Alex must never have had much of a holiday and decided to give him one.

Alex wants to kiss him. Wants to swallow whatever words Michael is going to say next and end the conversation there.

“Look.” Michael squeezes his hands. “When my mom—when she died. And after. Everything I worked for, everything I built the console for and devoted my life to, I thought it was over. Useless. But…you told me you were my family. And I know it took me too long to believe it, but I do now.

“I built the console because I was searching for my family. And now that it’s right in front of me, I want you to have a piece of it. Want us to have a piece of it.”

Alex searches Michael’s face, every earnest, open inch, until he can’t stand it anymore, until he drops Michael’s hands in favor of cradling his face, pulling him in, and taking his mouth in a slow, deep, careful kiss, tasting coffee on his tongue, drowning in the coming home of him, of his mouth on Alex’s, the rightness of having him in his arms. Michael responds with enthusiasm, stroking his back with his broad hands, making eager little noises into the kiss, going along with it until Alex pulls away to look at him again.

“You’re unbelievable,” Alex breathes.

“Thought it was the season for believing,” Michael replies, a little smile returning to his face.

“That’s what they tell me,” Alex says, and kisses him again.

--

Michael stays the night, wrapped up in Alex’s blankets, wrapped up in every inch of space Alex has ever thought was empty or cold. He doesn’t even need to set the heater that night, kept plenty warm by Michael’s body all along his back, holding him so close.

They wake up slow in the morning, but Alex earliest, because…

Well, even after everything Michael has done this month and everything he said the previous day, Alex is nervous about Michael’s Christmas present. He needs those extra minutes, watching him sleep peacefully, to steel himself.

But when he watches Michael wake up, sees how the first thing he does is look for Alex so he can smile at him, he isn’t so worried anymore.

They bring the blankets out into the sitting room, bundling up under the tree. Buffy leaves her bed to lie beside them instead, on top of the blankets, effectively pinning them in place, so Michael has to use his powers to get the wood and kindling set and strike a match and get a fire going in the fireplace.

The light flickers like something living off the console shard hanging from one of the uppermost branches. Heart in his throat, Alex pulls the envelope—the same one that held the ornament he got on December 1st—out of his pocket.

“I have something for you, too.”

Michael takes the envelope, eyes locked on Alex’s like he’s waiting for permission to open it. When Alex nods, he slips the tape open carefully, almost reverently. Like Alex, he’s never really gotten a gift before. Not one he thought meant anything. Not one he thought could stay.

He shakes the envelope, and a key falls into his hand.

“It’s to the front door,” Alex says to fill the silence.

Michael’s fist clamps around it with a familiar desperation, like someone might come out of nowhere to snatch it away. He blinks glossy eyes, wet lashes up at Alex, his mouth open, closed, throat bobbing as he swallows. Alex reaches out to stroke his closed fist.

“You’re my family. You’re my home. I don’t ever want to shut you out; I want you to be here. With me. Together. And I think you want that too.”

“Alex,” Michael chokes, and then he’s in Alex’s arms, wrapped around him in a hug.

He stays like that for most of the day, handsy and gentle, reaching out to touch him whenever they’re separated even for a moment. The next day passes much the same—then the next they both have to go back to work, live lives outside of their little holiday bubble.

Alex gets home first. He takes the dog out, gets dinner out of the freezer. Then about an hour later, he hears a car outside, footsteps on the stairs, then, after a minute’s pause, a key slots into the lock.

And Alex knows.

[raisedbyfandomwolves]

Prompt: Kara takes Mon-El to a museum for the first time :)

This one got REALLY long but that’s just what your prompt did to my brain and if I get into any kind of trouble for this I’m blaming you. Also this was supposed to be set in show canon but some of my own writing slipped in so... yeah.

---------

The idea comes to her out of the blue, and the longer Kara considers it the more sense it makes.

She hasn't been a great mentor to Mon-El, she's willing to admit as much, but now that she's aware of it she's trying to make up for her past mistakes and do it right from now on. Of course, sheer determination only gets her so far and she ends up getting kind of stuck pretty quickly... that is, until an innocent little pamphlet in her mailbox gives her some unexpected but brilliant guidance.

“We're going to the museum,” she announces with a bright smile and more than a fair amount of enthusiasm the next morning when she visits him in his quarters at the DEO.

Predictably, he does not share her excitement and simply stares at her with a perplexed look on his face. “We are? Why?”

Uncharitable thoughts about Daxamites and their blatant disregard for higher learning fill her mind and all but erase her jubilant mood but she fights to keep her irritation from showing. Deep breaths, Kara. You promised yourself you'd be patient with him. It's too soon to give up just yet. “Because if you're going to fit in on Earth, you need to know more about it and unless you want to attend school for the next twelve years instead, this is a pretty good alternative.”

Maybe it's her prejudice speaking but she expects him to refuse because it doesn't sound fun. To her pleasant surprise, however, he barely waits a second before he shrugs casually. “Okay. When are we going?”

“Oh. Um.” Caught somewhat off guard by his almost immediate agreement and maybe feeling a little guilty at having prejudged him – again – without real cause, she flounders momentarily. “We could... go now? If you're free?”

Once again, he just shrugs and puts away his phone – a loaner from the DEO, like pretty much everything else he has – before getting up from his bed where he had been sitting. “Sure. Lead the way.”

He's similarly compliant throughout the journey to their destination, never once giving the impression he doesn't actually want to do as she suggested, and because of that she lets herself slowly believe the trip is going to be a resounding success.

Of course, he proves her wrong pretty much the second they set foot inside the first gallery which happens to be focused on human evolution.

“This is what the first humans looked like?” he asks a little too loudly for her liking as he scrutinises the Neanderthal models in the exhibit with a raised eyebrow. “How long did they take before they started resembling us?”

“Shh!” she hisses at him with a mix of panic and anger as she throws furtive glances around them to check if anyone has overheard his incredibly suspicious questions. “Not so loud! And you talk as if there's no chance your distant ancestors didn't look anything like this!”

Her counterargument naturally fails to have its intended effect because he just turns to face her with that infuriating grin of his. “Nope. Not a chance. I mean, look.” He angles his head so that it's somewhat aligned with that of the Neanderthal model and gestures between them. “There's no way this-” he points at his face, “-could have come from this,” he finishes as he points at the face of the model.

She doesn't really know why she's letting it get to her so much when it's clear he's just fooling around – how she's so certain about that is something she doesn't want to think too much about – but instead of just dropping the matter, she feels compelled to keep the argument going. “So you're saying Daxamites were perfect or something from day one?”

His grin widens as he steps closer, and she gets the distinct feeling she's walked into a trap without realising it. “Why, do you think your ancestors looked like that once upon a time?”

There's no two ways about it; he's got her cornered there, and the realisation makes her grind her teeth with so much force she's almost sure the sound is echoing inside the mostly empty gallery. “Just keep moving,” she finally growls when she decides that responding to his question won't work in her favour and all but bodily drags him towards the next gallery.

True to form, Mon-El is just as insufferable at the next exhibit and every single one after that, making dumb comments and even dumber jokes that she absolutely was not going to laugh at no matter how much he insists otherwise. By the time they're approaching the last gallery, she's one stupid wisecrack away from tossing him into the river and calling this plan an utter failure.

As they come to a stop in front of the dinosaur fossils on display, Kara mentally braces herself for yet another barrage of questions and statements designed to piss her off. Jokes about the T-Rex's tiny forearms most likely, for starters, and maybe some ridiculous comparisons between the triceratops and whatever creature he's seen on another planet.

Instead, he stands statue-like as he stares up at the ancient bones that make up the exhibit in complete silence with an expression she's hesitant to name.

All the irritation she felt before vanishes and she suddenly feels like she's intruding on an extremely private moment even though she can't quite understand why.

“Do you miss them?” he asks apropos of nothing, unreadable gaze still fixed firmly on the fossils.

Restlessness turns into confusion in a heartbeat as she frowns at him. “Dinosaurs?”

He still doesn't look at her. “The dragons.”

Oh.

It clicks then – that almost lost expression, that look in his eyes that suggests he's not really seeing what's in front of him but rather something far in the past, that uncharacteristic quietness... She knows them all too well because she still catches herself doing all those things even now.

He's thinking about home.

“The prince had a dragon, you know,” he says softly before she can figure out how to break the silence although she wonders if he's talking to her or no one in particular. “She was called Nes'th; it means 'swift' in old Daxamite.”

They're the only ones here and he's not being too loud which means there's no need to worry about being overheard. Besides, it doesn't feel right to tell him to stop so Kara steps closer and keeps her tone respectful and gentle. “What was she like?”

A ghost of a smile curves his lips, whispering of fond memories and heartbreaking sorrow, and it's so unlike the Mon-El she knows that she finds herself irrationally and inexplicably hating it. “She was beautiful – the most beautiful dragon to ever grace Daxam's skies. The way her black and blue scales glinted under Rao's light... It was like she was the night sky in physical form.”

“You sound like you really cared about her,” she comments carefully. It strikes her as a little strange why a simple guard would be so attached to a dragon belonging to the prince but this seems like a terrible time to ask about it.

“I helped look after her,” he answers her unvoiced question before he finally meets her gaze with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes – eyes which she notices with some disquiet are presently a dull grey instead of their usual colour. “Sorry, could I just... have a moment?”

For a moment, she wants to insist on staying – to tell him that she's here for him and he can talk to her or something along those lines – but stops herself before she actually does it. This is about him, not her; he needs space right now – has openly asked for it, even – and the best thing she can do for him not just as his mentor but also as... a friend, if she dares to use that term... is to give him that. “Sure.”

Kara stays long enough to mumble a soft 'you're welcome' when he thanks her before she does as she'd promised, wandering off until she finds herself in the gift shop of all places. Unsure how much time she should wait before she goes back for him, she browses the souvenirs on sale with no real intention of buying anything until she spots it: a small pterodactyl figurine. It's obviously a toy meant for kids but something compels her to pick it up and take note of the price.

Mon-El's uncharacteristically sombre expression surfaces in her mind and she makes the purchase before she can think twice about it.

Even so, her stomach is in knots for reasons she can't figure out as she goes back to find him and all but thrusts the little gift bag out for him to take. “Here.”

That melancholic expression of his is gone – whether it's because he's gotten over it or buried it under that happy-go-lucky facade of his is unclear – and he looks confused even as he accepts the bag from her. “What's this?”

Her stomach churns as she watches him pull out the toy in slow motion. “It's not a dragon, I know, but it's all they had.”

He stares at the little figurine in his hand like it's the most precious thing in the universe for Rao knows how long and her anxiety just keeps growing until he finally lifts his head and gives her a smile that lights up his entire face. His eyes, she notes somewhat idly, are more blue than grey now too, and it's strangely a relief to see them that way. “Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

Like magic, the knot in her stomach disappears and her heart does a weird flip-floppy thing. “I'm not going to buy you another one if you break it,” she says just to stop herself from saying... what exactly escapes her.

Instead of being offended, he just smiles that little bit brighter and her heart does that weird flip-floppy thing again. “I'll take really good care of it, I promise.”

(When he moves in, the pterodactyl figurine – still in perfect condition – occupies a special spot on one of her cupboards.)

[alecmagnuslwb]

New Year’s Eve: Chapter Two

Read it all on AO3 or previous ch. here

One magical night, five intertwining love stories, all culminating at midnight with just maybe some confessions and kisses as the clock strikes. 

This chapter: It’s all about the ladies. After filling in for her forlorn roommate in a New Year’s Eve ball drop contest, Helen might just find her dream girl in party planner, Aline, on top of getting to put her political science geek out front and center when she meets the mayor.

***

2 P.M., New Year’s Eve

Aline chuckles as she exits the hotel, pressing a kiss to Catarina’s cheek and urging her to call if their boys get too out of hand.

She’s leaving Alec and Magnus to sort it out for themselves from here if possible. She loves Alec and wants to see him happy. She even played the doting best friend for nine months hating Magnus Bane on his behalf, but she also watched the pain in his eyes and light in his smile dull out. She doesn’t know Magnus’ side, but she knows the way Magnus used to look at Alec was real, something just went fuzzy in the end.

So, today she’d reached out to Magnus for the first time in months after receiving word the record company had to switch out headliners. She’s done her part, she helped bridge the gap now the balls in their court.

She has other things to attend to, most importantly the ball drop ceremony in Times Square. Usually the city handles everything, but after a nationwide search for one person to press the button alongside the mayor and the Jonas Brother’s they’d reached out to an outside event planner to prep the individual and throw a small gathering for them beforehand.

The hotel where the Edom records party is being held is thankfully only a few blocks away from the offsite building where they’re holding the party and meet and greet. A private escort will get them where they need to be closer to midnight. She enjoys the walk the cold December air more of a wake up to her system than any cup of coffee could be.

She arrives at the building fairly quickly, the city just it’s normal amount of busy still so early in the day, heading upstairs flashing the badge she’d gotten sorted out days ago that grants her access to all things here and in Times Square.

“Ms. Penhallow,” the Mayor’s assistant greets her when she reaches the proper floor with a smile extending her hand to shake.

“Ms. Herondale, lovely to see you again,” she squeezes her hand letting go. “I assume everything is in order.”

Ms. Herondale shakes her head, gesturing for the Aline to follow her. “Everything arrived and was set up as you ordered yesterday.”

They turn a few corners entering a room with a large floor to ceiling set of windows that give a gorgeous view of the city and a particularly good look at the ball suspended high in the sky. It’s always looked so odd during the day. More like a weird pimple on the side of Times Square than the glowing globe of spectacle and wonder it is after the sun goes down.

She surveys the room; the decorations and settings aren’t the prettiest things she’s ever been in charge of. While the Edom Records party is a stunning ball room of twinkling lights, intricate floral displays and high paid entertainment, this is more like a classed-up Beauty and the Beast themed party with varying tones of gold decorations.

Her budget for this had been fairly small, the city allotting only a sprinkling of money more concerned that Aline show the contest winner a good time than anything else. It’s a low-paying gig that Aline would usually never accept, but the exposure of getting her name and ability into the Mayor’s ear could lead to many well off rich, white dudes being very willing to pay her lots of money to plan exurbanite parties for them.

She loves the concept of taking their money and using it to branch off from her mother’s business and start up her own, so she’s taking this job more seriously than anything.

***

Helen can’t believe she agreed to this. That she let Rebecca swindle her into going in her place all with the promise of getting to talk politics with the New York City Mayor and dishwashing for a month. She wishes she had Clary’s strong will and actual plans and had turned down the sad eyes and no doubt eventual empty promises of their roommate.

She’s late which is already a valid reason why she shouldn’t be doing this. Rebecca said she was told to be here by three, it’s nearly four already because Rebecca wasted her time moaning about having to go before actually working on convincing her to go and then by law Helen had to stop and pet the large golden retriever that she had gotten tangled up in the leash of when she exited the subway. It’s a sign from above that she should have just stayed at home.

The party itself will likely be boring, she’ll probably only talk to the mayor for barely a minute and then be bored to death. She’ll get some free food if nothing else. The actual ball drop part is a little worrisome, since crowds aren’t Helen’s favorite thing, but she assumes there’ll be alcohol at this pre-party and a few glasses of wine tend to allow her to lose the edge and fall into whatever space she’s in without a care.

She looks down at her phone double checking the address while looking up at the building before her. She’s here and officially just over an hour late. She works her way inside and up to where a receptionist guides her to the event.

She enters the room and first notices how oddly classy it looks. She feels like she’s walking into a way fancier party than Rebecca told her it would be and suddenly she wishes she hadn’t just left in what she’d been wearing around the apartment.

She wishes she was dressed nicer even more so when her eyes scan the room and spot without a doubt the most gorgeous woman she’s ever seen. The beauty is looking down at her phone, a tight black dress with a well-cut silver edged navy-blue blazer over top. Helen on the other hand is wearing a fake fur line leather jacket, possibly her oldest pair of skinny jeans and a Hayley Kiyoko t-shirt.

The woman’s long dark hair falls off to one side and Helen wants to run her fingers through it. She’s staring, she’s aware she’s staring and of course that’s the moment she’s caught. The woman looks up and Helen knows for a fact she’s absolutely screwed once a smile lights up her pretty face.

“I’m the contest winner,” Helen blurts out realizing she should probably say something. The woman’s smile brightens, and suddenly Helen forgets all her worries and concerns about taking Rebecca’s place. The smile is professional but with maybe just maybe an edge of something else when she pockets her phone and starts walking towards her.

***

Aline spots the blonde entering the room and smiles, not out of professional courtesy but out of sudden, sharp interest. This woman is breathtaking with sharp features and soft eyes. Aline pockets her phone and walks towards her as she announces herself as the contest winner.  

“You don’t look like the photo they sent me,” Aline says looking at the beautiful blonde in front of her. It’s not really the first thing she intended to say, she was just completely thrown by how beautiful this woman is. The blonde squints her eye and Aline panics worrying she might have just offended this goddess. “Not that that’s a bad thing, at all, you’re gorgeous, you just looked different in your photo.”

The blonde smiles shyly before speaking, “That’s because I’m not actually Rebecca Lewis, she’s my roommate, she got dumped recently and decided she hates New Year’s Eve so she bribed me to come in her place. She said she emailed you about it, I’m Helen Blackthorn.”

Aline reaches out a hand and introduces herself in kind. Helen’s hand is soft, the many skinny silver rings on different parts of her fingers are a cool touch against her skin. The handshake lasts a little longer than a handshake should, Aline smiling as she lets go.

She pulls her phone from her pocket opening her mailbox to find a ridiculous amount of unread emails. Down the line at the start of the day sits one from Rebecca Lewis stating she’d be sending a roommate in her place.

“Huh, there it is, it’s pretty busy day of the year for me it must have slipped past,” Aline shrugs pocketing her phone once again and looking back up at Helen with a beaming smile.

“That’s okay,” Helen says with a smile. “Sorry I’m late by the way.”

Aline shakes her head. “No worries, the actual party doesn’t start for about another 30 minutes I just wanted you here early to prep you for anything in case there were nerves about meeting Nick Jonas.”

Helen just snorts in response.

“Honestly, I don’t think I’ll have any sort of reaction to Nick Jonas,” she laughs.

Aline raises an eyebrow then gives Helen a subtle once over noticing her t-shirt, which gives her some unprofessional hopes that this girl likes girls.

“Too much of a lesbian Jesus fan to care?” she asks with a smirk.  

Helen looks down at her shirt as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing and then lifts her eyes back up to Aline’s with a blush. A blush that is very promising. Aline should probably be having a moral crisis about wanting to flirt with this woman, but she’s not technically her client so it seems like a safe area to just go for it.

“Yeah, only second to my great bi leader Halsey,” Helen says and Aline tries to hold back her glee at the sexuality confirmation. “I also will definitely be more excited about meeting the mayor than anyone with the last name Jonas.”

Aline’s about to ask for further explanation when the Mayor’s assistant re-enters the room. From there it’s a flurry of prep and minor introductions. The mayor will be there in an hour or so and Helen seems mostly ready, if not a bit nervous to actually meet the mayor. It’s adorable and Aline is so glad she’s decided not to have a professional moral crisis about her attraction.

***

Helen listens to everything the mayor’s assistant and Aline tell her before the party starts. Trying desperately not to stare every time Aline makes any sort of movement. It all goes by in a rush after that. The party actually starts, she eats some fancy cheeses and snags a glass of wine happily.

Aline introduces her around once things start getting in full swing. Helen geeks out at every member of the city council she gets to encounter and even starts in on a rousing debate about city by-laws with a few of them that keeps her more than engaged for nearly an hour.

She meets the mayor and is literally stunned. She knows that she probably looks crazy like a super fan meeting their idol. She talks and talks and asks questions that he seems to happily welcome even though some of them are definitely a little critical of his policies. Their conversation is interrupted when the Jonas Brothers arrive and Aline pulls her away to do a quick meet and greet before they have to leave and make their way over to get stage ready.

They’re all three incredibly nice, but Helen could care less and she’s not a very good actor so they likely notice. She goes through the motions gets a picture with them and is more than happy when a few of the city council members ask for selfies as well allowing her to work her way back over to the mayor.

Even through her glee with discussing policy and politics with the mayor she finds her eyes always straying to Aline. She’s 99% sure Aline isn’t straight based on the once over she gave Helen that she just barely caught and the fact that she called Hayley Kiyoko lesbian Jesus. That alone is queer girl confirmation 101, it makes Helen’s little bi heart pitter patter happily. Aline’s flitting about the room, shaking hands and smiling bright, it’s clear she’s in a full professional mode handing out business cards and charming the pants off of everyone in the room.

Helen would quite literally like her to charm the pants off of her. It’s a wholly inappropriate thought that crosses her mind when she blatantly watches Aline bend over after dropping a napkin. She’s pretty sure Joe Jonas catches her doing so judging from his knowing smile. She may not have been too eager about meeting them, but damn does she respect at least one of them after he lets that slide.

It’s getting late, the sun fully set when the mayor excuses himself to take a phone call. Helen looks around, she’s been having a great time shockingly, but crowds aren’t her favorite thing and she suddenly needs a breather so she slips out in the hall finding a stairwell to give herself a moment.

***

Everything settles and Helen seems comfortable surrounded by local political leaders and less than enthused about the Jonas Brothers. They don’t seem to mind though which Aline respects; she respects even more that they all three requested her business card. She’d expected to schmooze some political minds tonight, three mainstream pop celebrities however could send her career skyrocketing.

She moves about the room in full work mode for a few hours, every now and then looking over at Helen and delighting in the smile on her face when she debates with city planners and mayoral assistants.

It’s hours later when she looks around and spots Helen slipping out of the room. Aline excuses herself from the conversation she’s in the middle of, sweeping past a table and grabbing two glasses of wine to trail after her.

She spots her in the little stairwell off to the side and softly smiles.

“I can’t believe you were more excited about the Mayor than the Jonas Brothers,” Aline teases when she steps up on the stairs behind her. “That’s so weird.”

“I’m a poly-sci grad student of course I’m more excited about the Mayor than the Jonas Brothers,” Helen defends with a smile as she looks over her shoulder. Aline makes an agreeing noise. That tracks with her glee over state versus national level laws when the subject had been lightly broached with the mayor before Aline had politely exited to the conversation to move about the room. The enthusiasm is cute.

“Mind if I sit?” she asks holding out the two glasses. Helen nods patting the steps beside her.

She settles on the step handing a glass over to Helen that she takes with a smile. They sit in comfortable silence for a bit just enjoying each other’s company. Behind her she can hear the rustle of the crowded room; she checks her watch knowing the mayor and everyone will make their leave soon enough.

It won’t be long after that that they make their way to Times Square, but Aline intends to take full advantage of the few scant moments of alone time they’ll have then and that they have now.

***

They sit for a bit just sipping their wine, both seemingly needing a break for a few quiet seconds. Helen chooses to break the silence after a while inquiring something that’s marveled her about the flirty Aline she first met and the absolute pro she’s watched flit around the party the last few hours.

“You don’t seem like a party planner until you go into full mode,” Helen says breaking the quiet. “No offence.”

Aline snorts and it’s far cuter than any snort has the right to be.

“None taken. It’s a family business,” she explains. “I wasn’t as into at first and definitely don’t put on the show like my mom does all the time, but then it turned out I had an eye for it and sort of fell in love.”

Helen hums taking a sip of her of her wine.

“You mentioned Edom Records earlier, why are you here if you’re also in charge of that event?” Helen enquires. There’s no way showing a random contest winner around and throwing her a party is anywhere near the same level of important as one of the hottest New Year’s Eve parties in the city.

“It practically runs itself once you have good talent in the kitchen and on the stage,” Aline shrugs. “Truthfully I’m only here because I fought for us to take on this job. Or at least that’s how it started; the company has turned out pretty nice.” Aline smiles and bumps her shoulder with an edge of flirtation.

“Why this party?” Helen says blushing and trying to ignore the second part.

“The mayor, I get him as an account for us on future events, then I get his friends and that means a raise or two for me which means more money for my savings to break off and start my own business,” Aline explains. “The Jonas Brothers were an unexpected bonus if they weren’t just being polite in taking my card.”

“Wow, so you want to break off from the family business then?” Aline seems so in her element in there she thinks there’s no doubt she could excel on her own.

Aline scoffs, “Like you wouldn’t believe. My mom, she’s great, but she wants everything done her way and her way can be very elite. I want to be able to do events that aren’t just for dudes with lined wallets. I want to be able to hire on help that might not find a job like this anywhere else and I want to be able to reach out to charity events that need a boost, things like that. I still want the guys with lined wallets, but I want to use the money I make off them to do other work for lower or non-existent rates.”

It’s a pretty incredible idea. A noble thing in a field that Helen wouldn’t expect such nobility to exist.

“What are you gonna call your business? I mean your last name is already taken.”

“I,” Aline starts and thinks for a moment. “Have no idea really. You any good at naming things?” She playfully pushes at Helen’s shoulder in question.

“Ha, no,” Helen barks out the laugh and admits. “We had three dogs growing up and as the oldest I always ended up naming them, they were all named Spot.”

“Helen, Spot? That’s the most basic dog name in the world, did they even have spots?” Aline laughs.

“Two of them did,” she defends. “The third was plain white, poor little guy got a lot of questions.”

Aline chuckles at that taking another sip of her wine before she speaks.

“It’s pretty nice of you to fill in for your friend by the way,” Aline says. “Most people would have forced them to get it together to go.”

Helen shrugs, they tried that. It failed.

“She’s not really heartbroken or anything, she’s just stubborn as hell, so even though I expected this to be a bore frankly, I fell for her sways,” she explains then adds on to make Aline feel certain. “I am however having a great time, so no regrets.”

Aline smiles finishing off her wine and sitting the glass to the side on the steps.

“I’m glad you’re having a nice time,” she says. “And no offence to your friend who I’m sure is lovely, but I’m glad it’s you that came here tonight.”

Helen finishes off her wine as well and turns to face Aline. She’s suddenly a lot closer than she had been a moment ago, just a few inches of space between them. For a second Helen contemplates moving her hands from her lap to settle one atop Aline’s on the step. Aline looks a lot like she wants her to do just that.

But before she can move a booming voice sounds behind them and they shift apart at the sound.

“Excuse us ladies,” the Jonas Brothers large imposing security guard says as they all file in behind him. Helen and Aline both stand smiling at each other quickly and brushing off the moment. The Jonas Brothers ease by them saying their goodbyes and nice to meet you’s, but Helen barely notices instead watching Aline’s striking profile in the low-lit stairwell wondering just what could have happened had the moment not been broken.

***

They head back into the party after the Jonas Brother sized interruption, Aline keeping a safe distance between them after that charged moment. The mayor leaves and most of the other local politicians do as well and Aline can tell Helen’s bored, but also more at ease. Clearly she’s not a big crowd person, which has Aline worried a bit about the actual Times Square portion of the evening.

They gather their coats following two burly security guards and a driver twice their size out to the street where they’re taken to a small vehicle that can work its way safely through the crowds.

They get in and after a while Aline starts to worry. Helen’s getting more and more quiet as the minutes pass their light talk tensing into silence that seems more about the situation than overthinking about their moment in the stairwell.

“You okay?” Aline asks bravely reaching out to take Helen’s hand in hers.

Helen squeezes her hand in response with a shaky smile. They reach as far as the car can go and the two security guards ready to part the crowds with their behemoth size and get them to where they need to be. Helen freezes as soon as they step out of the vehicle, seemingly frozen in place.

Aline gives the security guards a look that they perceive correctly pushing up enough space so that there’s good distance between the crowd line and where Helen stands. Helen’s looking around a little frantically like the reality of this crowd and the fact she’s going to have to move through it a bit is suddenly hitting her.

Aline could try and talk her down, tell her it’s going to be okay, but she knows that if Helen gets panicked enough no words are going to help this situation. She likes this woman; she doesn’t want to put her in a situation that’ll put her in bad headspace. So, she takes a leap and makes an offer.

“You wanna get out of here?” Aline asks hand gliding up and down Helen’s arms in a soothing manner. This contest is a wash. The actual winner isn’t here and despite seeming into it earlier in the day Helen is now freaking out about the crowd. She already met the Jonas Brother’s and the Mayor and geeked out about politics; that can count as her contest winning prize.

“You can’t just leave, the Mayor and everything,” Helen says with a shake of her head. “I’ll be fine.”

Aline immediately starts shaking her head. “You don’t have to do this and clearly don’t actually want to. Technically my job here is finished. The party and showing you around was my job; the ball drop is more in Ryan Seacrest’s hands than anyone else’s and I’m fairly certain that a pack of five grown men can handle pressing a button. As for the Mayor I’ve done my part I schmoozed and he already sent his wife my info, I’m in the door and a good handful of other doors as well, so don’t worry about that.”

Her hands find Helen’s gripping them tight. “So, in a completely non-leading, just caring about your comfort kind of way, do you want to get out of here?”

Helen releases a breath Aline’s fairly certain she’s been holding far too long, a shy smile gracing her pretty pink lips.

“Where are we going?”

Aline beams tugging Helen past the crowd slowly moving onto the more breathable side streets. She gets one of the guard’s attention making her way back to where they came from. The vehicle has already left, but the guard happily guides them through the crowd making a path and getting them safely outside of the Times Square hot zone. She holds Helen’s hand tight ensuring they don’t get separated the entire time.

When they finally reach the freer, but still buzzing streets the guard nods to them and heads back with instructions from Aline to tell the mayor there was a personal emergency that he needs not worry about.  

“I know a pretty great party a few blocks away, that has some great music and damn good food. I bet we can make it there before midnight,” Aline says turning to Helen. People bustle around them a few uncaringly bumping into her as she speaks. Thank you New York. “Unless you just want to go home.”

“No,” Helen says quickly, maybe a little quicker than she intended judging from the blush on her cheeks. She seems calmer now, comforted by the normal bustle of a New York street. “I want to go with you, a party sounds fun.”

Aline nods taking her hand once again and guiding her through the streets.

***

Helen’s fears slip away in crashing waves the further they get away from Times Square. The normal bustle of a New York street is oddly comforting to her as is Aline’s hand in hers. She can’t quite believe Aline just ditched it all for her, to make her feel comfortable and is now taking her to one of the hottest parties in the world.

They walk quietly all the way to the Edom Records party Aline clearly giving her the room to get back to ease. The mental space, but close physical comfort of their entangled hands makes Helen’s quick growing crush grow even stronger.

They get into the Edom party easily Aline being recognized by the man at the door instantly. Aline sadly informs her they missed dinner, but dessert is being served shortly. By the time they shed their coats, Helen’s at the same ease she’d been at when the first party had begun.

Aline takes her hand again pulling her into the main hall and Helen is floored. The space is gorgeous and open, if the party for her had looked beautiful this is an entirely different level.

“Wow,” Helen whispers uncertain Aline can hear over the music.

Aline smirks over her shoulder, confident and breezy. She definitely heard her. Magnus Bane is performing on stage and Helen is a little floored by how good he sounds live. Magnus Bane who Aline evidently knows.

“He’s dating my best friend, sort of, it’s complicated,” she shrugs as she plucks two glasses of champagne off of a waiter’s passing tray. She hands one out to Helen. “You feel better now?”

Helen nods, “Definitely. Thank you for that back there, usually a few glasses of wine would take off the edge of crowd worry, but I guess it didn’t work tonight.”

Aline nods in understanding, “It’s no problem. Times Square crowds are a whole lot bigger than a packed club or something of that nature.” She pauses for a second seemingly debating her next words. “Plus, just us at midnight and not on national television could be pretty nice.”

Helen takes in a sharp breath at the layered meaning of that. Midnight means kisses and the concept of kisses with Aline sends her mind into overdrive.

“To us?” Helen says feeling a little bold with Aline’s more blatant flirtations coming out now. She holds out her glass.

Aline smiles reaching out her own glass and tipping it against Helen’s.

“To us.”

***

They finish their glasses of champagne and Aline holds out a hand for Helen offering a dance that she shyly accepts. The songs go quiet after a while Magnus singing a sweet acoustic track Aline instantly recognizes. She and Helen are taking a dance break just listening to the slow beat. Aline looks around and spots Alec across the room frozen in time as he listens to the song he’s been avoiding for months.

A small smile comes across her lips and she hopes on everything her best friend doesn’t run away from this. Magnus is pouring every emotion into every line and she hopes Alec recognizes every breath is for him.

She casts a sideways glance to Helen watching as she looks at the stage swaying lightly to the song. Helen turns her head catching Aline’s eye. She looks like she’s about to turn away but instead holds the eye contact until the song comes to a close. The boisterous clapping from the room breaks the moment and quickly both of them are standing clapping along with the rest of the crowd.

A DJ takes over and the room starts to spread out a bit more, chatter all around as waiters make their way around with plates of gorgeously designed cupcakes.

They each snatch two cupcakes off a passing waiter’s tray, two strawberry for Aline. One strawberry and one chocolate for Helen.

“Is this the best cupcake I’ve ever tasted or am I just way hungrier than I realized?” Aline asks after the first bite, ready to propose marriage to the cupcake in her hand.

“Definitely the best cupcake,” Helen says as they both polish of their first ones quickly. Aline already half done with her second by the time Helen is biting in to her chocolate one.

“Oh wow,” Helen says taking a bit from her second cupcake making an almost orgasmic sound that nearly knocks Aline off her feet. “You really should have gotten a chocolate one too, even better than the strawberry.”

Aline shakes her head trying to ignore the way that sound affected her.

“No way,” she scoffs ignoring the pit of want in her stomach.

Helen proceeds to shove the rest of the cupcake in her mouth and it shouldn’t be cute with crumbs flinging everywhere, but somehow it is. She brushes her hands off to the side, grabbing another flute of champagne as a waiter passes by and drinks down half of it before handing the other half to Aline. She tosses it back before holding out a hand.

“Thirty minutes till midnight,” she says hoping the thirty minutes will allow her the chance to build up the courage to kiss Helen. That blatant stare they had minutes ago tells her this is definitely a mutual feeling, just one of them needs to make the first move and she’s betting it needs to be her. “Let’s keep dancing.”

Helen takes her hand smiling as she pulls her in close on the dance floor.

[sorrowfulwill]

What's your headcanons on the Reverse Falls character roles and/or relations (like romantic, family, platonic)? There's lots of variations among different people's personal RF AUs, and I'm interested to see the nuances and variations of yours.

For example, are Pacifica and Gideon cousins, siblings, best friends, strangers to each other or something else? Do the young Gleeful twins have another sibling, do they have parents, do they live permanently in Reverse Falls? What's Stanford's role? Is he a manipulative mastermind, a scamming conartist just trying to make money from the Tent, a loving Grunkle? Who is related to who and who are best friends, or lovers, or enemies?

Mk I’ll give a few sorry if there’s bad wording it’s like 4 in the morning where I live rn

Pacifica and Gideon are cousins but often refer to eachother as best friends for plot sake

The gleeful twins (mainly Mason) are spoiled little rats and a bit mean to will but not like straight up abuse. Mabel is a bit more chill around Will. Will sees them like family or friends.

Stanford is a piece of shit. The gleeful twins were put into his custody after their parents were shit and shit got worse. Stanford is a con artist that uses the twins passion for entertainment to fuel his bank account. He often leaves the twins alone with Will so they’re Will’s problem now. And due to this constant neglecting the gleeful twins have gotten more aggressive and rude towards everyone around them for attention. Stanford is the one that abuses Will as well

Nobody’s really in love

Mabel and Pacifica are a bit complicated. there’s a possible plot idea where Pacifica tries to be Mabel’s friend, Mabel tries to make Pacifica more like her and separates her from her own cousin, Pacifica speaks out, Mabel gets possessive (literally), and shit goes down Mabel is almost exposed but conveniently dodges all irresponsibility, Mabel hates Gideon forever because he interfered.

The gleeful twins live permanently in reverse falls and managed to drop out of school so they could line their grunkle’s pockets.

oh yeah and Stanford maybe gets fucking killed at the end by Will but that’s a maybe

a lot of this was just straight info dumping so I can’t tell if I answered your question or not but enjoy the long post

[ephemeral-writings]

Everything I Need // 02

oh sehun x reader

genre: angst

word count: 1.7k

Everything I Need // oh sehun teaches you a thing or two about life. but falling for the boy who lived across from you was not what you had anticipated. 

Part 01 / Part 02 / Part 03 / Part 04 / Part 05

.

TL @snowflakesandkisses 

You woke up at ten the next morning, stomach empty and begging to be filled. Your last meal was a protein bar and extra leftover fries from your co-worker, it was no wonder you were starving. Your mother would surely frown upon the poor excuse of a meal that was a bar and a bag of chips from the school’s vending machine.

It wasn’t too cold out, but you grabbed a jacket on your way out anyways. Down the street, at the corner of an intersection, was a cheap diner that you frequented, especially when you’ve yet to restock on groceries. What your mom never told you was how expensive it could be to fill the cupboards and fridge with food.

You ordered your usual, a sausage omelette with a hefty side of potatoes because you loved potatoes like it was your lover. As much as you ate at the diner, you hated being outside in general. As you played with your phone, you tried your best to ignore the gnawing loneliness that crept up. You drowned out the sounds of chatter as people of all ages shared a meal together, and you were mostly successful with food to distract you, but then they walked in.

The group was the same age as you, and you knew that because one out of three of them was your classmate. You prayed a silent prayer that they wouldn’t notice you. Kim Jongdae was a social butterfly, and despite you being anything but, he had never failed to flash you a smile and gave you a simple greeting whenever you bumped into each other.

“Oh, hey, Y/N,” Jongdae chirped as his friends walked by to sit in the booth behind you.

“Morning, Jongdae.” You hoped there wasn’t a piece of potato skin stuck in your teeth. Jongdae was a pretty good looking guy, just not your type and you most certainly weren’t his. He asked you about the paper that was due in two weeks time, whether you had started working on it or not, and of course you did. There wasn’t much in your life besides work to distract you.

After exchanging a few more pleasantries, Jongdae rejoined his friends. You overheard one of them ask, “Who was that?”

“She’s in my econ class, we did a project together a while back.”

“Oh.”  

They quickly dropped the subject, and you stopped listening.

Your phone stopped being entertaining when you’ve gone through your e-mails(mostly spam and school related). You never understood how people could stare at their devices for hours on end, two hours was enough to give you a headache. It was twelve by the time you left the diner. On the way back, you stopped by a market and picked up some essentials. You needed at least some source of food before re-stocking with your next paycheck which was due by the end of the next week. Eggs, bread, milk, ramyeon, and a new box of cereal would be more than enough to feed one girl.

You walked back to the apartment with all the items stuffed in one bag, except for the carton of eggs which you held. You decided to stop by the mailroom to check if you had any, which you did. Spam mails from your bank, credit cards ads, and a letter addressed from a correctional facility.

“Hey.”

You snapped your head in the direction of the voice calling your name. Sehun, standing a few feet away, was looking at you with a questioning look.

“You okay?”

You looked at him and back to the letter in your egg carton-free hand. What the hell was it even doing in your mailbox?

You nodded even though you could feel the blood draining from your face. “I’m fine. I gotta go, I’ll see you around. Bye.”

To say Sehun was surprised by how abruptly you had left would be an understatement. Your face had looked pale, but more than that, your hands were shaking as you locked up your mailbox.

As soon as you were in your apartment, you ripped open the envelope. The letter was creased and torn on a few edges  and the writing wasn’t in any better condition. It had, after all, traveled all the way from a penitentiary miles and miles from here.

The day before your high school graduation, your father was incriminated for fraud. Unbeknownst to you and your mother, he had gambled away everything your family owned, including any little money left that was keeping your mother on chemo. In the end, the cancer wasn’t what killed your mother but your father, and for that, you never forgave him. After the funeral and sentencing, you packed everything you could carry and walked out of the empty home. So your father, whom you’ve lost contact with for three years now, how did he find out where’d you lived?

You thought you’d never be faced with the man who was the cause of all your sufferings, but somehow he’s managed to creep back in your life in the form of a letter. Like hell you were going to allow anything further than that. The letter tells you that he was sorry for his mistakes, that he’s repented, and wishes for nothing more than to make things right. His mistakes? They costed your mother’s life. Him realizing his mistakes now wasn’t going to bring her back. Repentment? According to the police, your father had been falsifying fake documents in order to cheat money from the government since before you were born. That was twenty plus years of coming clean of his sins, but of course he’s finally had time to reflect after being caught.

You heaved a few deep breaths, realizing the constriction in your chest. You tear the paper into shreds, until the words were no longer decipherable, much like the father figure in your life.

You brushed whatever tears that unwillingly escaped, and quietly prepared for work.

If it was one thing you could count on, it was work being the worst distraction possible. A bad start to the day just makes the shift that much harder to get through. Your boss lectures you for not properly garnishing dishes, in the middle of a goddamn dinner rush, and you accidentally burn your hand with hot soup in the middle of it all. Just the cherry on top of it all, a man then yells at you for not giving him his food before another table’s when his order came in one minute after.

“Sir, we are working on your order right now. It should be done in any moment.” You try to stay as calm as you possibly can, and placate the angry man. “Why don’t I go check on it, okay?”

Everything was apparently not okay when he hollers back, “Are you even doing your job right?”

Chanyeol, the other server tonight, meets you in the kitchen and murmured under his breath, “You want me to handle it?” You shook your head, willing the hot tears away, but your face was no doubt burning red.

“I’m fine. I got this,” you flashed smile in thanks, but he still looks at you, unsure, as you turn on your heels and head towards the table with the man’s order in your hand. Everyone, and literally everyone, watched as you present it to the man and he all but acknowledges you. Instead, he shot up from his seat, muttering to his wife to stand as well, and promptly stomped out of the restaurant.

To think that was the most that could go wrong. Your boss proceeded to blame you for your lack of competence for not bringing the food to the angry man first, “Because their table only had two orders! You could’ve finished that table’s order before starting on the bigger table! Use your brain, Y/N!”  

You bit your tongue so hard that you broke off a tiny piece, and all you could think of while going through that second round of verbal abuse was how you might possibly choke on your own blood.

You finished off your shift with little encouragements from your co-workers, but other than that, you were ready to go home and sleep until the next ice age.

--

The next day, on Friday, you didn’t have class or work, so you decided to head to the police station. Last night you barely slept a wink. Even though the letter had been physically rid of, you couldn’t ignore the unsettling feeling in your stomach. How easily it had manage to find its way into your mailbox, it scared you half to death to imagine the man himself showing up on your doorsteps unannounced.

The bus ride took half an hour, with morning traffic, before you finally arrived with questions prepared in your head.

Despite your father being a convict, it was your first time stepping foot in a police station. On the bus there, you imagined it to be hectic, dangerous even, but all you were greeted with was a bunch of middle-aged men and two women sitting in front of computers, some looking like they haven’t slept in days. There’s a man in one of the cells behind the cubicles, snoring loudly, which explains the annoyed looks on the officers’ faces.

“Good morning,” you greeted a man at what you think is the front desk.

He’s not one of the ones who looks tired, but his movements are sluggish as he looked up from his computer screen to see who was the random girl so early in the morning. “Morning. Can I help you with something?”

“Yes, I have a question.” You took a moment to find the proper words to ask, “Would you know if it is possible to rejected letters from someone in prison?”

The man peered curiously at you, and asked, “Is there someone harassing you, miss?” You shook your head without elaborating. The officer noticed that, so he went on. “Well, I’m going to assume that the inmate is your immediate family. They don’t send letters out unless the content’s been approved of, and sense no danger in forwarding the message.”

“So, if I can request for the letters to not send, may I?”

He nodded. “You would have to contact the facility directly, and handle it from there, miss.”

You gathered as much from that that your father doesn’t actually know where you live. Now all you had to do was make sure it stayed that way.

[lifeinahole27]

CS ff: “On the Two” (Chapter 1/9) (au)

Summary: He’s one bad trip from ending up in AA, and she’s one performance away from a solid job and moving closer to home. Their paths were unlikely to cross until Camp Hope brought them together. How and why they meet and intertwine is against the odds, and definitely against the rules, but will that really stand in their way? A Dirty Dancing inspired modern au.

Rating: E 

Content Warnings: Borderline alcoholism, very brief mentions of past relationships, mentions of the loss of a limb - this fic is primarily tame but I’ll do my best to tag anything that might need tags. 

Chapter Specific Warnings: Alcohol use, past injury mentions

A/N: Holy. Shit. I’ve finally found a minute to post chapter 1. Hoping to stick to a Thursday schedule for posting, and I can’t wait for you all to see this unfold. 

I have to give shoutouts and love to three very important people to this process. @initiala sent this over a year ago:  look i know you're busy and have a lot of fics, but just hear me out: CS Dirty Dancing AU. So. Now you know who to blame/thanks, like I’ve been doing! To @phiralovesloki for the heaps of emotional support and handholding when I needed it. I can’t imagine my life without you in general, let alone my writing process. And of course, my beta, my dancing expert, my sanity: @captainstudmuffin. Thanks for all you do for me, from proofreading to slapping me into action. I’m sure we’re even on boob punches... for now. 

Catch it on FFN & Ao3!

Welcome to Camp Hope!

About Us

Years ago, Ruth Nolan operated these camp grounds as a haven for children to explore the fruits of the Earth and come into their own. For fifteen years, she oversaw the summers of thousands of children, all in need of the room to grow and eager to learn the skills of the outdoors.

In honor of Ruth’s hard work, we’ve re-opened the camp to those who still want to learn about the wilderness, explore the rich terrain that this coastal Maine property has to offer, and take the classes you’ve maybe not had time to take in the past. It’s not all outdoors, either! Our staff is composed of very talented individuals that are available to teach you almost anything, from dancing to the arts, yoga and fitness routines, as well as anything you’d expect from the average camp of summers past. You’ll enrich your body and mind and connect in ways you never have before!

A summer camp for adults may seem like an outdated or unconventional thing, but here at Camp Hope, we aim to improve the memories you may have of summer camps long past, or make new ones if this is your first time. Plus, now is your chance to try things like zip-lining without getting a consent form signed! There are plenty of perks to trying new things when you’re old enough to decide for yourself.

Please check our FAQs and pricing packages; your stay can be as short as a week or as long as the whole summer. Our accommodations range from your own private cabin to our brand new, hotel-style lodgings. We welcome you, and hope you’ll enjoy your experiences!

Sincerely,

Snow and David Nolan

Owners, Camp Hope Ltd.

-x-

Sifting through the mail on his table, Killian tosses the pamphlet for some kind of camping place into the stack to be thrown away. It joins the myriad of advertisements and coupons that he doesn’t bother to look at or ever use. Besides, if it’s a camp marketed towards adults, it’s likely something religious or a thinly veiled addiction recovery facility, and while he’s probably edging along the lines of alcoholism, he’s damn well not there yet.

There’s roughly a week’s worth of mail here, as it’s been a couple days since he’s even thought to check his mailbox, but he’s sure Liam will be up his arse any day here to go over his finances. If he makes it look like he’s been keeping things in order, Liam is less likely to give him his Worried Brother speech this month.

He sips at his coffee, pausing just a moment to pop two painkillers before resuming his sorting. When he’s hungover, the phantom pain where his left hand should be is stronger, and today is no exception to that. He hasn’t bothered to put on his prosthetic, content instead to leave it off until he has to go into public.

Days like this, though, he has nothing but time to mindlessly sift through his queue and get day-drunk. It’s been ages since Killian can remember going more than two or three days without a drink. That doesn’t stop him from unscrewing the top of his favorite brand of rum when he pours the second cup before he settles in to watch Netflix. He sprawls across the couch, happy as he ever can be to live off the settlement over the accident that cost him his hand.

There’s a bar down the street that he visits when he needs personal interaction, and if he’s lucky there might even be a woman willing to help with even more personal interactions. That’s what last night had been – him in the bar until closing, a brunette that he can’t remember the name of giggling as she pulled him towards her car. A short while later, a cab brought him home, alone, with a little less dignity than he had before.

The sound of a key in the door announces Liam’s arrival before the man himself calls out a greeting, and Killian is minimally glad for the distraction from the road of self-pity and/or loathing that he was about to embark down. He knew there was a good reason to starting his sorting today. He stashes the bottle of rum beneath the coffee table again, running his fingers through his hair real quick to tame it down.

“Ah, you are awake. Excellent. I thought we’d set your bills straight, and maybe head out for some lunch. Breakfast? What meal are you on?”

“Let’s just call it brunch. Eat first, bills second,” Killian declares, sending his spiked coffee one forlorn look as he realizes he’ll have to go get dressed and act like a responsible adult for a few hours. He takes one more gulp before taking the mug to the kitchen to dump it out.

He’s in his room for just over five minutes, using food as a motivator to get him out the door sooner. The shirt is mostly wrinkle free, and he thinks the jeans he slides on are clean, so he’s at least presentable and won’t have to deal with Liam’s tongue-clicking. He makes sure to snag his sunglasses off the entryway table before ushering his brother out the door. Had he taken much longer, Liam surely would’ve declared that the bills looked quick or manageable, and they’d take ‘just a minute more’ to complete. As it is, he can see his piles have been tampered with, straightened and organized to his brother’s preferences, as he glances back on his way out; he timed it just perfectly.

Halfway through eating, Liam takes a sip from his water before placing it back on the table, steepling his fingers as he rests his hands on the table. “I’ve just had a thought,” he says in a way that really gives away that he’s been sitting on this for a while now. “How would you like to get out of town for a while?”

“When? How long?” Killian asks, preoccupied by the task of trapping all the toppings on his sandwich. He hates using his prosthetic to eat, doing his best instead to wrangle the whole thing with his right hand while his left arm stays beneath the table.

“Over the summer? We could make an adventure of it. Maybe go back home, visit the relatives. It’s not like you’re doing anything here. As my own boss, I can afford to take some time off. We go, we live a little, return in the fall as new men. What do you say?”

The prospect of getting out of the city, away from everything that holds painful memories for him, does sound appealing. Spending the whole time with his brother, however, tarnishes it just a touch. It’s not that he doesn’t love his brother, but Liam has a tendency to be… a little overbearing.

Of course, for a long time after Killian’s accident, Liam probably had every right to be. He’d just lost a hand, for fuck’s sake. Coming just after the loss of his fiancée probably didn’t help, either, but Killian was deep in a hole of depression for so long he wasn’t sure he was ever going to see the surface again. Now, he’s not so much depressed as he is resigned to this life, unemployed due to disability, living off the accident settlement, and drinking away his feelings as often as possible without officially becoming an alcoholic.

The thing is, Liam’s overprotective shadowing of Killian’s life is nothing new. He’s been this way for as long as Killian can remember, and since Killian can only half remember a handful of instances with either their mum or their dad, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibilities that Liam feels more like Killian’s father than his older brother. Still, every bird has to fly the nest sometime.

And Killian did for a bit. He flew, and was so close to having everything he wanted in his life – a job doing a craft he loved, a woman that he intended to marry and grow a family and home with, and still the taste for adventure on the tip of his tongue if he ever chose. But all good things come to an end, in his experience.

First was Milah’s passing. Her brief but destructive illness soaked up all their life savings, leaving Killian with a broken heart and empty pockets. He didn’t care about the money, and why should he? He lost the reason he was saving it in the first place. He could earn it all again, but he’d never have Milah back. And then, shortly after, as he helped wrap up a custom boat build for a wealthy client, something went wrong. He still doesn’t remember exactly what happened, just that one minute he had a left hand, and the next he didn’t; it really was that simple.

“I’ll think about it,” Killian finally says, abandoning the hand-held option for his food and dropping it back into the basket it came in. He stabs at the pieces of it with his fork and considers the offer. He will think about it, too; he’s not just saying so to change the conversation back to footy and traffic patterns. It’s been a long time since he’s gotten away. He’s set for life on a permanent vacation if he so chooses, but a change of scenery would be welcome at this juncture of his life.

The idea marinates all while they finish their meal, and the whole walk back to Killian’s apartment. He’s so hung up on the possibilities involved that he doesn’t even complain as they sit down with his meager stack of bills. He signs when he’s told to do so, with no remarks about the tedium of the task while they work.

By the time the afternoon is wrapping up, Killian has made up his mind. As Liam stamps the last of the bills and puts Killian’s checkbook back where it resides, Killian speaks up. “I’ve thought about your offer to get away for the summer. Might not be such a bad idea, after all.” He keeps his tone light, nonchalant, hoping that Liam won’t catch on that it’s something he might genuinely be excited about for the first time in longer than he can recall.

“Excellent. Leave all the planning to me,” Liam says as he stands and throws the trash into the bin. “I’ll send you a packing list when I’ve finalized the plans and we can meet up again to get everything squared away for a couple months out of town.”

With a shrug, Killian extracts himself from the couch in order to see his brother out since all their business is complete. In his distracted state, he misses the gleeful look on Liam’s face; it’s an expression his brother was infamous for as they were growing up and meant that Killian was about to be served a life-lesson, and he likely wasn’t going to enjoy it very much. But he’s so lost in his thoughts about all the places they may go – both familiar and new – that he bids his brother goodbye and settles back in for his slightly interrupted day of Netflix.

He doesn’t even slip more rum into his glass until after he’s had his dinner.

-x-

Emma Swan is just as much a part of Camp Hope as the camp is part of her. For the last fourteen years, Emma has been making the journey of varying lengths back to the campgrounds; it’s something a lot like flocking home for the summer, and she’s made the trip from right in Storybrooke – the tiny town closest to the camp – and from as far as Tallahassee, all those years ago.

This year, she’s traveling from just outside Boston along with her roommate, Ruby. While the stories of their upbringings are vastly different, Emma and Ruby have been two peas of a pod since Emma’s first trip.

Back then, she was journeying to Camp Hope as part of a foster kid outreach program. It was two glorious weeks that she and twenty-some other foster kids got to go to someplace new, rather than waste away in a group home or get shipped off to bible camp again. She was fourteen, and while some of the crafts and activities were aimed at kids much younger than her, she still sat at the table and made bracelets, tie-dyed a shirt and bandana, and participated in capture the flag with water balloons like it was her first time, but that’s mostly because it was.

At the campfire that night, Ruby plopped down next to her, showing her the “right” way to toast marshmallows and offering to put red streaks in Emma’s hair so they could match.

Emma passed on the streaks, but the next day when Ruby dragged her to a special meeting for future counselors, it was all history from there. More than just finding a way to spend her summers that didn’t involve wallowing in her own loneliness and isolation, Emma met David Nolan during the counselors program. Upon picking up bits and pieces about her, David decided to introduce Emma to his mother. As soon as Ruth met Emma, she was set on bringing her on as a permanent fixture in their lives.

Having previously thought that she’d never find a place that wanted her, a place that wanted someone old by foster standards and jaded beyond reason, Emma was shocked. Not only was she wanted, she was loved. Despite the three year age difference, and the short time they’d been together, David became her best friend and brother, with Ruby a close second.

There was a shared passion of dancing between Emma and Ruby, and when they weren’t raking in the volunteer hours during the summer, they were saving every penny they earned from their respective guardians to take dance lessons one town over. And that’s the way it went until they graduated.

Remembering what happened after graduation always leaves Emma with a pit of shame in her stomach that feels a lot like indigestion, so when she wanders to the kitchen, she pops two antacids before starting up the coffee maker. It used to be worse, but time heals all, even wounds that don’t feel like they’ll ever scab over.

It’s time for their annual trip back, just two days away, and Emma has too much to do to spend her morning in a guilt trip over things that happened in the past. Instead, she wanders down the hallway to get Ruby up. There’s a whole list for her friend to complete today, and she’s pretty sure she’s also battling with a hangover from being out too late the night before.

She knocks, only twisting the knob and entering the room after hearing the faint groan of invitation. “Hey there, champ. Good morning!”

Ruby groans again, struggling to push her eye mask off her face and groping for the pain killers and water on her nightstand. She’s one of those drinkers that’s always considerate to her morning self – something Emma has always been in awe of. “You’re not the morning person, stop sounding so chipper,” Ruby instructs after drinking down half the water. She hauls herself to sit up, patting the edge of her bed for Emma to sit down. “What’s on your Snow-style agenda for the day?”

“I’m going to clean. You’re going to wrap up the sub-let on the studio space. Graham is supposed to be down there around noon, so you’ve got time, but I need you to grab the costumes we’ll need for performance nights.” She leaves Ruby to get herself out of bed, and calls out that she’ll get breakfast started.

“Don’t break the toaster!” Ruby calls from behind door that Emma closes on her way out, and while Ruby can’t see Emma rolling her eyes, she knows her friend will sense it. It was one time.

Leaving for Camp Hope has always been a little tumultuous for them, but after this many years, Emma thinks they’ve gotten a little better at it. There were a few years where they weren’t going back to work camp, and those are the years that make Emma’s heart ache most – more than the year she refuses to think about.

They closed the camp when Ruth’s health suddenly declined the year after the year-that-shall-not-be-named, and Emma and David only made the journey every week to tend the growing weeds and mend the deteriorating buildings the best they could. With Ruby’s help, they were able to keep the camp from falling apart, but the same couldn’t be said for them. Ruth passed the winter after Emma turned twenty, and she lost the closest thing to a mother she’d ever found.

Luckily, they had one more to hold their family unit together. A year after Emma met him, David met Mary Margaret Blanchard, better known to her friends as Snow, and Emma got to witness fairytale levels of Love at First Punch between them. Down the road, the wedding was a bit rushed, so that Ruth could watch her son get married. Years after the quick engagement and marriage saw them going stronger than ever.

For two years, the camp remained closed, but David and Snow, thanks to an off-hand comment from Emma, decided to reopen the beloved summer camp as an experience for adults. It took a whole other year until they could renovate everything up to standards, but it was worth it. The first year they opened again, it was so profitable and the waitlist was so long that they were easily able to expand and enhance the experiences.

Shaking her head, Emma realizes she’s spending way too much time reflecting and not enough time moving. Down the hall, she hears Ruby’s water start up, and knows she has until the time the taps shut off to get that woman some hangover worthy breakfast. Pouring herself a large mug of coffee, she takes three deep, scalding gulps to get herself going.

She’s just plating up some eggs and bacon, snatching a bagel from the toaster so Ruby can construct her own breakfast sandwich when the roommate in question comes ambling into the kitchen.

This is Emma’s favorite version of Ruby. Stripped of her makeup, without a product in the world in her hair post-shower, wearing an old t-shirt and boxers for her pajamas. Her usual persona is an elaborate mask, with the heavy makeup and killer manicure, flirtation just as exposed as her long, lean legs normally are. The short shorts and low-cut tops are standard everywhere but at home. That’s the Ruby that will likely crawl into her car bright and early in a couple days, but today she’s happy to spend time with average Ruby, and she’s happy when she does not break the toaster again. There are small miracles, after all.

When both of them are settled at the breakfast bar with their food, they start talking strategy, both in prep for leaving and for camp itself.

“Are the costumes for the Waltz demo here or at the studio?” Emma asks as she alternates sips of coffee and bites of her pop-tart.

“The studio, I think. I’ll grab them when I meet with Graham and lock up everything else of ours.”

“Good. Don’t sleep with him this time, okay?”

“No promises,” Ruby says, a wicked grin spreading across her lips even as she tries to hide it behind her coffee mug.

At the very least, they might get a deal on the rent again, which is the only consolation Emma can think of. The rest of their day is a whirlwind, with Ruby taking care of the studio and Emma tidying up their apartment. She packs the bulk of their non-perishable foods to take with them, cleaning as she goes, until the whole kitchen is spotless. She also takes the time to write down the instructions and emergency numbers for Aurora, their downstairs neighbor that’s been kind enough to take care of their plants and fish while they’re gone.

It’ll be weeks until either one of them can make it back to the city, if they do at all, but Emma doesn’t mind. While she loves Ruby and living in the city, she gets her own cabin for the summer. They converted one of the old lodges into a dance/yoga studio, located just a short walk along the west trail from the main lodge. Behind said studio, they relocated one of the cabins and refurnished the whole place to act as the dance director’s housing for the summer. Thankfully, Ruby likes to throw herself into a multitude of activities, so she bunks in the staff cabins up the hill and leaves Emma to have her solitude.

Mostly, all that means is that no one will know that she’s in the studio putting in extra hours. Maybe this will be the year she can quit hunting down bail skippers and be able to focus on nothing but dancing. She can always dream, at least.

Ruby stops in only briefly to drop off a case of their costumes and check in, taking the time to change into a date dress and do her hair and make-up. She gives Emma a wink before she leaves and tells her not to wait up, before disappearing in a flurry of stiletto clicks and perfume. She doesn’t get home until late, when Emma is already tucked in her bed hoping to fall asleep. Her friend is humming and heads straight for the shower.

Emma’s not a bit surprised two days later when Ruby announces that Graham decided to pay more than they originally negotiated, and laughs at the wolfish grin on Ruby’s face as they throw their bags into the backseat and boot of the Volkswagen Bug that Emma’s had for years. They’re actually running on time for once, but Emma doesn’t expect that to last long, especially when, after only an hour, Ruby announces that she’s famished and starts calling out the name of food places they pass.

The trip to Storybrooke, on the coast of Maine, is one of Emma’s favorites. The scenic views from Boston onward are ones she’s familiar with, but that still lift her heart. The trip is only four hours if they don’t stop, but with Ruby’s pea-sized bladder, and her bottomless stomach, it’s more likely they’ll get there in five hours… if they’re lucky.

One year, it took them almost twice as long to make the journey because Ruby was chasing down the International Cryptozoology Museum and her cheap-o GPS meant that the museum (which was on the way) eluded them for hours until Emma screeched that they were done looking and if Ruby really wanted to see it, they’d find it on the way home.

They found it on the first try on their return drive, and Ruby bought her the biggest cone of Rocky Road ice cream they could find at a nearby ice cream stand, to make up for the original disaster.

This job that they do, this ability to go up and demo and teach dances to the souls that will wander through the paths of Camp Hope, is only possible because of the popularity of the camp. The first year, Emma and Ruby would switch off every two weeks, with Ruby piling all her lessons into the two weeks she was home and Emma trying to catch ask many bail skips as possible in between her own lessons and classes. When the popularity of the camp became apparent, they were able to rent out their studio space to a few other dance teachers in the area while they took the whole summer to attend to the camp. It helps that David is able to pay them, and pay them well, for their time and energy.

Along the way, Emma has met the heartbroken and the heartbreakers, she’s met dreamers and lovers, she’s taught cynics and optimists, and she’s danced for every person in between. The two of them together have dealt with perverts and assholes, handsy men and women who don’t take “no” for an answer, and people who have gone on to contact them once the summer ends to continue their lessons in the city. It makes it all worth it, these months away from all the comforts of home, to spend their summers in another version of home.

Plus, thanks to an excellent network of friends in Boston, they never want for anything from home if they forget it. It’s all just a PayPal and overnight shipping away, really.

As Ruby climbs back into the car from their third rest stop, this thought comes in handy. “I left my favorite performance shoes by the door,” Emma groans out as her friend seatbelts in and starts the car.

“Good, because I forgot to grab my sleeping pills off my nightstand,” she says, grinning quickly and dropping the sunglasses back onto her nose.

“I’ll text Aurora now.”

With the promise of a package imminently to be sent their way, Emma relaxes as the last of their journey passes by outside the windows. She zones out to the sights, not perking up again until they hit the Storybrooke town limits. They’ll top off the tank and stop in to see Granny for lunch (second or third lunch by Emma’s count) before heading up to the campgrounds. Her car crawls by each familiar sight, and Emma smiles at the simplicity of it all – the never-changing nature of their sleepy little town. While she only officially lived in Storybrooke for three years, it’s still the only place she’s ever called home.

Granny is already outside by the curb when they pull up, and Emma takes a minute to let Ruby climb out of the car to reunite with her grandmother. It’s only after she sees their hug loosen up that she opens her door, languidly stretching as she unfolds herself from the passenger seat. Then it’s her turn for Granny to gather her up and hug her so hard that Emma’s back cracks. She won’t complain, it definitely eases the travel tension to get a hug from Granny. They’re ushered inside the small diner the elderly (and boy, would be lose her shit if Emma said that term out loud) woman has run for the last billion years.

“When should I expect the first package from your neighbor?” Granny asks after their lunches have been set in front of them.

Ruby laughs, not even ashamed of the fact that they’re so predictable that her grandmother knows they’ve already left something behind.

“We’ll be back in town over the weekend to get it,” Emma answers.

“I already saw one of the trucks of shipment head up to the campgrounds,” Granny remarks as she refills Ruby’s coffee cup. “Your brother has been up there for weeks getting everything ready.”

“Please tell me he’s at least eating.”

“Snow has badgered him back home a couple times now to eat and sleep, and she picks up meals on the days they decide to stay up there. Sounds like you’re gonna have a full camp most of the summer.”

“That’s the plan,” Ruby says, beaming before she takes the last bite of her sandwich.

Emma waves them both off when they move to go into the back for more family time. It’s not that she and Ruby don’t get to visit ever, it’s just that the stretch between Christmas and camp time can sometimes feel like much longer. The same itch resides just below her skin – the need to see her brother and sister-in-law so strong that she almost slips away before she’s done eating and leaving Ruby to hitch a ride out later with one of the counselors that lives in town.

Instead, she idly swirls her onion rings through her ketchup, taking her time with making sure every crumb is gone from the plate while she waits. She glances around, waving to the familiar faces in the booths and at the counter beside her, and she grins at the large board already propped near the entrance that loudly welcomes the campers to town. Since the grounds are two miles north of Storybrooke, many will pass through on their way. Some will stay overnight in the bed and breakfast while others will stop for a bite and a fill-up before continuing on to Camp Hope.

Thankfully, the business that the camp brings to the town will mean that the owners of most, if not all, of the establishments will have their pockets lined for months to come, making the onslaught of guests and visitors worth it when the summer ends and they go back to something less than a speck on the map of Maine.

Ruby and Granny are back a short time later, while Emma is idly catching up with a sweet yoga teacher that goes by Tink. The name is fitting of the cherub-faced woman with the perfect curly bun of blonde hair on top of her head. She’s new to the staff, but not to the town, so Emma is happy to listen to her excitement bubble over as she discusses all the classes she’ll be teaching for the next few months.

“A little help?” Ruby asks, and Emma finally glances up to see her friend’s arms laden down with several bags of what Emma assumes are home-cooked meals, prepared in advance and packaged for the crew that’s already working on getting the grounds ready for the summer. She moves around the counter to take a few of the cloth totes, waving farewell to Tink as they head out.

The rest of the afternoon passes quickly; they use the main entrance to deliver the food to Snow, who’s waiting for them beneath the welcome sign when they pull up. Emma hugs her tight before transferring two of the bags to her. They make the short trek down to the main lodge where Emma gets to give her brother his own hug, tight and bracing and full of the warmth she misses when she’s away from him for so long. With lunch delivered, Ruby and Emma head back up to the car to move it to the staff parking.

The lodges they’ll each be staying in are much closer to their hidden lot than they are the main entrance, which works out well when they’re unloading enough luggage for four months, and maybe a kitchen sink or two. It takes them three trips up and down the steps leading to the lot: one to Ruby’s space in the staff lodges, one to Emma’s private lodge, and one to the studio itself.

Emma wastes no time turning on all the lights and stepping up onto the vast wooden floor. There are mirrors lining one wall, floor to ceiling, and another has all the cabinets where they store their costumes and gear. The wall opposite her reflection has windows spaced evenly apart, which she immediately starts working open even as Ruby brings in the last tote of their stuff. The air is a little stagnant, but flipping on the overhead fans will get it moving again.

Ruby drops the last container with their gear, rushing out to choose her space and start unpacking as soon as she can and promising to come back later to help get the studio in order. Emma waves her off, already itching to have the space to herself. Her muscles are practically begging to be warmed up, to take advantage of the wide open space that calls her name.

She knows she needs to clean first; the mirrors and windows all have that faint tinge of grime that comes from a long winter of neglect. The air conditioning unit needs to be tended to, as well, and tested to make sure it’s in working order before the summer starts in full. Then there’s the cleaning and organizing and stocking and… and Emma doesn’t care. She rips open the first bag she finds and pulls out leggings and a sports bra – they’ll do in a pinch. She changes quickly before skipping along the path back to the studio.

It’s only a matter of time before she’s selected something with an upbeat tempo, thankful again for the auxiliary port that allows her to play her own music from the impressive sound system. She sits on the dusty floors for a moment to slip on a beat up pair of practice shoes and lamenting again how she’ll have to turn her focus to cleaning next.

She takes her time stretching, making sure to work out all the kinks from the drive up and getting her muscles and body all warmed up. As soon as she’s on her feet, she’s running through swing patterns that she can do on her own. Through lines of sailor shuffles and slides, she dances using the whole dance studio, going from one end of the spacious floor to the other. She doesn’t get this much room in Boston. She doesn’t get this solitude. She doesn’t get this freedom. Maybe this is the real reason she loves coming back to camp so often, and there’s probably something in her psyche to deal with in those regards but it’s nothing she’s willing to look too closely into.

By the time the playlist switches to something for cooldown, Emma has worked up an impressive sweat. She grabs a towel from the same bin she found her shoes in, wiping down her face and neck before dropping back to the floor for final stretches. Placing the towel on the floor, she stretches out briefly, staring up at the ceiling and watching the fans whirl peacefully above her. This is it. This is home for the next couple months. And nothing will change how happy she is to be here.

With that thought, and a beatific smile, Emma changes back to her tennis shoes and hauls herself off the floor. There’s hours of cleaning ahead of her, after all.

Chapter 2

[theawkwardterrier]

To The Neighborhood

Steggy Week, day 5 Prompt: Domestic Bliss

Summary: New neighbors always have the potential to disrupt things, and the couple fixing up the monstrosity across the street seems more capable of disruption than most.

AO3 link here.

When the sign at number six, Meadow Close, switches from For Sale to Sale Pending, Dr. Valerie Oglethorpe, DDS, (please feel free to call her Dr. Oglethorpe) is of two minds. On the one hand, number six is currently an elaborate ruin of a house, a confection of turrets and too many windows neglected for so long that it can hardly be called a Victorian anymore, and new owners would certainly mean repairs so that Dr. Oglethorpe will no longer have to look out at such a blight on her street. On the other hand, the owners of numbers one through four have all been confirmed to be calm, normal people who leave for work somewhere between seven and eight, return between five thirty and six thirty, keep their lawns tidy, and never make a fuss except for the occasional barbecue, which suits Dr. Oglethorpe extremely well. With new neighbors, one is never certain what the outcome might be, and the purchase of such an impractical house is already a poor sign.

But the real estate agents and bank representatives don’t consult current residents about these sorts of things, so when the sign changes again from Sale Pending to Sold, Dr. Oglethorpe decides that she will make the best of whatever situation arises.

She happens to be out in her garden the first time a car pulls up in front of number six. Dr. Oglethorpe’s garden is extremely elaborate, with all the typical vegetables and flowers alongside multiple rare and interesting plants, and many of them are blooming in the late spring weather, forming a lush barrier which surrounds her property.

All that is to say that when Dr. Oglethorpe can see the new couple and they cannot see her, it is not spying in the traditional sense. It is certainly not purposeful. It would just become extremely awkward if she were to get up and make a spectacle of herself, so she stays quiet and still and watches them.

They are both on the taller side, and well-built. The man’s hair is blond, and the woman’s a lovely rich brown. Dr. Oglethorpe might not have the best eyesight anymore, but even from a distance she can tell that they are both quite good-looking. They stand side by side, peering up at the house. The woman puts her hands on her hips and says something that makes the man laugh, and then he takes her hand and they walk inside.

Dr. Oglethorpe seizes the opportunity to return to her own home. She’s finished her weeding, and of course the two of them will be back outside eventually and she isn’t sure she’s ready to greet them just yet. Better to get the reckoning of them first.

That her kitchen window offers an excellent view is, of course, coincidence. As, naturally, is the way her eyes look across the street throughout the morning, even though nothing visibly happens for a long while. Finally, towards mid-afternoon, the couple comes back out, arm in arm, returns to their car, and drives away.

Dr. Oglethorpe gives them decent markings for the first day, but she’s perfectly willing to reevaluate depending on what type of people these turn out to be.

There’s a near immediate drop in estimation the next time the couple appears. It is close to a week later when they drive up again, and they are accompanied by someone driving a pick-up truck with a construction company logo on the side. This time the man is dressed casually, in jeans and a slightly disheveled T-shirt. The woman has her hair covered by a bandana. Standing at the kitchen sink and distractedly rewashing the breakfast dishes, Dr. Oglethorpe gives reluctant approval to the idea that they are people with specific vision and a hands-on approach. They must be giving the construction chief an overview of the house before he begins with his crew, and she does appreciate that they’re dressed appropriately for wandering around what must be a pit of dust and mold and falling pieces of wood and wallpaper.

But after about an hour, once she is back at the kitchen table with a crossword, she hears an engine start up, and instead of seeing the couple drive away, it’s the man in the truck. The bed is empty, so he’s clearly unloaded his supplies and left them at the house, and when the sounds of a hammer and - mercy - a saw, begin, Dr. Oglethorpe is faced with the nasty truth.

Do-it-yourselfers. Fixing a loose hinge or installing an air conditioner on your own is one thing, but amateurs taking on a whole house? Dr. Oglethorpe certainly cannot approve.

Over the next weeks, Dr. Oglethorpe learns a few things. The woman’s name is Peggy. The man’s is Steve. They are very eager workers, arriving in the morning just after the last of the other neighbors have left for their offices, and driving off just before they return. They laugh with each other quite a bit - she can hear them no matter where they are in the house because of the broken windows - and they were polite enough to leave a note in her mailbox apologizing for the noise and mess, as if she were unaware that houses getting repaired will have a noisy, messy intermediary stage. She does not, of course, respond to the note.

She also learns that they have a large and eclectic group of friends who apparently lack regular jobs too.

Steve and Peggy work alone for about a week, wandering between the interior and exterior seemingly depending on weather and mood. But the following Monday, a back door to their car opens instead of just the front two and a man with shaggy brown hair pulled halfway back steps out. He stands on the sidewalk to look up at the house. Dr. Oglethorpe just catches a glimpse as she prunes a rosebush, but she thinks the man has some sort of prosthesis. She quickly applies herself back to the bush, making sure not to look up again until the three have gone into the house.

She can’t hear exactly what is being said, but there is indignant shouting, and a yelled response which is immediately followed by laughter, so she knows it’s playful.

Dr. Oglethorpe listens, but she can’t hear a difference in noise level signalling an extra hammer or a new set of boots on the floor. Perhaps the new man is just observing, or maybe she’s gotten used to the racket.

A few days later, a second car arrives in the morning. Steve, Peggy, their long-haired friend, and an African-American man come out of the first car, and a redheaded woman steps out of the other one.

The newest man elbows the barely kempt friend. Dr. Oglethorpe is checking on her pansies this morning, which are planted in a neat row at the front edge of her lawn, and the man has a carrying voice, so she is able to hear him say, “We usually don’t agree on much, but you’re right: this is a Project.”

Dr. Oglethorpe is not given to figures of speech, but imagines that she can actually hear the way he capitalizes the word. She quite agrees with him, actually.

Project or not, the newcomers roll up their sleeves and join in. To give them the benefit of the doubt, Dr. Oglethorpe will assume they are focusing on working from the outside in because she has seen very little improvement thus far, although they certainly are committed.

Peggy and Steve are there every weekday with the two men and the redhead as their most frequent assistants, but a new cast begins to rotate in as well. There’s a man who balances on the roof and spends two days removing shingles and then three fixing rotten pieces and replacing everything fresh. Dr. Oglethorpe keeps one horrified eye on him whether she’s inside or out because he works without a harness and spends much of his time making sarcastic remarks down to the ground or in through the windows instead of focusing on the task at hand. There’s a young woman who speaks accented English and has what Dr. Oglethorpe considers a suspiciously easy time lifting and carrying things; she remembers a piece on National Public Radio from several years ago about female bodybuilders, but the woman seems too slight for that. Occasionally a man drops by who has cropped blond hair, a boisterous voice and manner, and the most enjoyment from swinging a hammer that Dr. Oglethorpe has ever seen. (It’s getting hot, and he wears a sleeveless shirt. She would certainly believe that he could be a bodybuilder.)

Dr. Oglethorpe’s favorite and least favorite days are when a shiny sedan screeches up mid-morning. She quickly becomes familiar with the dark haired man who acts taller than he is, the bright, controlled, blonde woman, and their three children, who pile puppylike out of the car and run shrieking into the house. There’s always much chaos when the family is around, but something about the energy is catching, too. Dr. Oglethorpe sometimes finds herself humming when the little ones are around the site, and she is distinctly not in the habit of such things.

Perhaps to the other residents of Meadow Close, things at number six progress quickly. Popping in and out as they do, seeing the house mostly in pale or waning light on the way to or from the car - perhaps they imagine it like a flip book. Dr. Oglethorpe, on the other hand, is surprised when she goes out with her trowel and her sunhat one morning and finds that she has an actual house across the street from her. After much sampling and flicking around of paint, Peggy and Steve chose a rich green for the main body of the house, although there were plenty of Victorian frills and finishings to which everyone has added accent colors. Dr. Oglethorpe can pick out yellow, rose, and beige, and while one might be forgiven for wondering if it might look haphazard with so many people chipping in, it actually looks quite well done, at least from a distance. Dr. Oglethorpe chalks this up to Peggy standing outside with a plan in hand and directing the whole lot of them.

There are a few days where the house just rests on its own, and Dr. Oglethorpe thinks that she should take advantage of the respite before Steve and Peggy officially move in. She reads the New York Times in full the way she has every day since she married in 1960. She does the crossword completely, in pen, and makes a grocery list for when she does her shopping tomorrow. She goes out to the garden, as always. But it is all too quiet. She ends up bringing out a portable radio and tuning it to the classical station. She knows that listening to music is good for the plants; so interesting that she hadn’t tried this years ago.

Peggy and Steve move their furniture in on a Friday. Dr. Oglethorpe watches it come out of the truck, much of it in Steve’s apparently extremely strong arms, though Peggy certainly carries her share as well. They’ve chosen solid pieces, vintage, she supposes one calls it these days, although Dr. Oglethorpe prefers to just think of it as classic and well-constructed. They have everything inside by the afternoon, and presumably are arranging things until fairly late; the house is lit up, but the newly installed windows make it hard to hear the scrapings of furniture or the conversation of her new neighbors.

Saturday morning, Dr. Oglethorpe rises at 7:30, her weekend wakeup time, and knows that she will have to bake something. She takes down the old recipe book and finds the instructions for a coffee cake. It is out of the oven by 9, but she leaves it to rest until 10 because she isn’t certain how late young people sleep these days. But surely any later than that would be absurd...

At 10:05, Dr. Oglethorpe, dressed in a blouse and skirt, climbs the steps at number six for the first time and rings the doorbell. It has a pleasant chime, and she’s glad it worked out; she heard someone cursing a blue streak for an entire afternoon while fiddling with the wiring.

“Good morning,” says Dr. Oglethorpe when Peggy comes to the door looking fresh in a silky T-shirt and jeans. Despite the modern clothing, she looks not like the image on the cover of a grocery store checkout magazine, but like the composed, inviting, friendly women in the catalogs of the 1950s. “I’m Dr. Oglethorpe. I suppose we’re neighbors now.”

“Peggy Carter,” says Peggy, and Dr. Oglethorpe tries to arrange her face into polite interest, as if this is new information. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

Dr. Oglethorpe hefts up her cargo, presenting the cake for inspection. ““Likewise. I’ve brought a cake, to welcome you to the street.”

“How kind.” Peggy takes the cake with care. Dr. Oglethorpe is proud of the way the cinnamon wafts enticingly through the air. Peggy glances over her shoulder. “Perhaps I could wait to serve it? We’re having a housewarming tomorrow, and you would be welcome to come meet my husband and our friends. It could also serve as a bit of an apology for the mess we’ve been making over the past few months.”

“How kind,” Dr. Oglethorpe echoes, hitching her handbag strap over her shoulder. “But I really couldn’t intrude.” She doesn’t mention that she hasn’t eaten sweets since her husband, Dr. Martin Oglethorpe, DMD, (please feel free to call him Marty, everyone did) who was the baker between them, passed away. Instead, she backs off the porch quickly, before Peggy can protest. “Enjoy the cake.”

Returned to her own familiar kitchen, Dr. Oglethorpe replays the interaction. She has been watching Peggy for all these months, and she didn’t know until just now that she has a warm, full smile, and a glint in her eye that reminds Dr. Oglethorpe of sneaking out at night, giggling, with her sister Laurel.

It is obvious when the time for the housewarming approaches. The now-familiar cars pull up, dispelling the now-familiar cast of regulars, along with some new faces. Steve or Peggy pulls open the door for each new arrival, and a cheer goes up from inside the house every time.

Around the three, as Steve comes out of the house, calling over his shoulder back through the front door before getting into the car and driving off, Dr. Oglethorpe walks into the garden. She’s elected to take advantage of the slightly cooler weather now that the sun has started to move from the top of the sky. She checks her irrigation system carefully, and looks over the last of her summer vegetables to make sure that they haven’t been revisited by bugs.

Everything looks fine, but she notices that her flower beds are getting a bit bedraggled and decides to go get her shears to do some deadheading.

Dr. Oglethorpe is, as might be expected, extremely familiar with her lawn. But sometimes an animal, not realizing that it is trespassing in her domain, will make some unexpected changes.

The burrow catches her by such surprise that she falls before she can even feel startled, but by the time she is on the ground, she’s quite aware of the pain. For a moment, she regrets not having one of those emergency call buttons that her daughter Joan (Dr. Oglethorpe hasn’t been allowed to call her Joanie in years) recommends when she makes her monthly call from Columbus, or at least a cellular phone.

She is looking around, trying to find something to support her so she can make her way into the house and call for medical attention, when she hears a voice say, “Hello?”

Her immediate instinct is to stay very quiet and hope that the person goes away. But then she remembers that some assistance would actually be, for once, appreciated. “Hello,” she calls back, trying to sound firm about it.

A moment later, Steve finds his way up her front path and around her bushes. He has a large bag of ice in one arm.

“Sorry to intrude, but my wife sent me out on an errand,” he says, gesturing to the bag, “and I just drove back up and thought I heard a sound.”

Dr. Oglethorpe hadn’t thought that she had made much of a sound (she fell on grass, and she is a fairly light person) but it’s convenient all the same. “Yes,” she says. “I just had a bit of a tumble. If you wouldn’t mind helping me up, I’ll go in the house and call emergency services.”

“Oh.” Steve looks troubled. “Can I wait with you until they come? I heard on the radio that there was some kind of accident on the highway, and I think the ambulances might be a little tied up, so it could be a while.” He brightens. “Or you could come wait with us across the street. There are plenty of people, and now plenty of ice.”

His smile is very charming, but Dr. Oglethorpe has remained unswayed by even better ones. (Perhaps not, but it sounds good. Up close he is both very attractive and increasingly familiar, although she can’t quite place from where...)

Aiming for calm conviction, she says, “Thank you for the offer, but if you’ll just give a hand, I think I’ll be fine.”

Though looking troubled again, Steve continues balancing the sack of ice in one hand and manages to politely but firmly wrap an arm around her waist and pull her to her feet. She sways for a moment, leaning on him more than she expected to, but then regains her balance and gives a nod to indicate that they can start to move across the grass.

He is very careful to skirt her various plants, which she appreciates. After a moment, he says, “I’m sorry if I didn’t introduce myself before, Dr. Oglethorpe. I’m Steve. Steve Rogers. I think you met my wife Peggy this morning.”

“Oh yes.” Dr. Oglethorpe says it as if she meets pretty new women with glints in their eyes all the time. “She seems nice.”

“Better than I deserve,” he says, and unlike so many men Dr. Oglethorpe has met in her time, including her son-in-law, he sounds as if he means it. “There was a while—years, actually—when I didn’t think we’d get to have any of this.” There’s something distant and haunted lurking in his tone. Then he shakes his head to chase it away and finishes, “I know just how lucky I am to be her husband.”

They’re moving slowly - Dr. Oglethorpe wasn’t very good at hopping when she was a spry young thing, and now each new jump requires a gathering of energy and a slight jarring of her ever more fragile bones - and Steve seems as if he wants to simply carry her, but she stares determinedly forward and continues.

“Your garden is amazing,” he says after a few moments. “How long have you had it?”

“Marty— Martin— My husband and I moved to the street in 1962, just after they’d completed our house. Yours was already there, of course,” she adds. “It’s historic; they couldn’t tear it down, so they built the street around it instead. Anyway, I knew that I wanted a garden, so I started with just some simple local flowers and a few vegetables, and continued from there.”

“Did you grow up with a garden?”

“Oh.” This is more small talk than she was expecting. “In a manner of speaking. I was a child during the war, the Second World War, and it was recommended that every family start growing their own produce.”

“Sure,” he says with a nod. “Victory gardens.”

“Are you a student of history?”

“You could say that.” She notices for the first time a bit of a glint like the one in Peggy’s eyes.

She shakes her head and continues, leaning on him more heavily as they switch from the grass to the less forgiving stone of the path. “I grew up in the city so we only had a little patch in front of my house, and a few window boxes, but looking after them came to be my favorite chore. Of course,” she says, eager that he be clear about this, “growing your own food was never as important in this country as it was in other places.” Her mother’s family had been English, and her father still had cousins in Holland, and the stories that they told, even years after the war, about rationing and grass soup and children making themselves sick on rich food after VE Day, had been dreadful. “But every little bit helped, and I became quite proud of the things I’d grown.”

“The flowers are also beautiful,” he says, gesturing with the hand encumbered by the ice, which is now beginning to drip down his arm. “We finished up the house pretty nicely, but I’ve been thinking about the landscaping. Peggy - my wife—” She likes the way he smiles a bit every time he says the words. “I think she’d like some roses, maybe on either side of the porch steps. If you have any advice, I’d appreciate it.”

“I’d certainly be glad to help.” She begins to think about whether any of her varietals would be good candidates for cutting and replanting.

They are at the front steps now. Steve says, “Are you sure that I can’t sit with you? Just until the ambulance gets here?”

She is so close to her own house that if she balanced correctly, she could reach out and turn the doorknob right now. She could likely bring herself inside and handle everything on her own, without this man she’s only just met, although she knows so much about him already. But her house will be so quiet and Joanie isn’t scheduled to call until next week, so instead she says, “Well, I wouldn’t want to take you away from your party, but I might appreciate some company.”

“I think I have a compromise, then.”

Moments later, after Steve has supported her down her front path, across the cul-de-sac, up his own walkway and front steps, he opens the door and calls, “Peg?”

Peggy breaks away from a conversation and comes over to the doorway. “I was wondering what happened to you. I wouldn’t put it past you to get into a situation at the convenience store.”

“The situation was a bit more local, I’m afraid,” Dr. Oglethorpe says dryly, extending her ankle as delicately as she can. It’s swollen and beginning to bruise quite spectacularly.

“Well, we can certainly help with that,” Peggy says. There’s a distinct air about her as if she’d say the same thing if someone had arrived on her doorstep with a bucket of nuclear waste or a grenade with the pin out. She opens the door wider and Steve makes himself small so they can both fit inside without jarring anything.

She’d never been inside the original house - the couple who’d last lived there, back in the eighties, had been flighty and barely stayed there a year before they ran out of money and left the house to molder in care of the bank - but what Steve and Peggy have done is marvelous. The big windows let in the remaining sun, lighting up the polished wood floors and the banister of the staircase which leads majestically upward. The large living room to the left and the dining room to the right are filled with chattering people and trays of food.

“Shove over,” Peggy says politely to a man seated in one of the living room armchairs. “We need the chair.” Dr. Oglethorpe realizes with a start that it is the shaggy-haired man, cleaned and pressed for the occasion.

“I’m so sorry,” she says automatically, keeping hold of Peggy’s arm. She can’t quite remember when she was moved from Steve’s charge into Peggy’s. “What a nuisance.”

“He can be quite a nuisance himself,” Peggy assures her, and the man smiles as they settle Dr. Oglethorpe into the chair. “Bucky, this is Dr. Oglethorpe. She lives across the street.”

Dr. Oglethorpe shakes his hand, barely noticing the strange prosthesis on full display as she finally puts a name to the person she’s known for months now. She looks around the party and realizes how familiar these people are, these people who have put in time and muscle and love into making a home for Steve and Peggy. There’s the redhead who fixed nearly the whole porch on her own and keeps glancing at it with satisfaction, and the black man who patiently climbed up and down a ladder over the course of several days, moving it incrementally around the house as Peggy pointed out areas where the paint needed to be fixed. Standing far across the room, telling an animated story, is the father of the three children, who made all the lights work after an electrical fiasco. (He, too, looks somehow familiar. Is he perhaps a television personality? She doesn’t watch with any frequency, and can’t see very well regardless, so she can’t be sure.)

Steve walks back into the room holding a phone, and some of his less melted ice in a bag covered in a towel. As he comes to hand it to her, he says, “I just called the ambulance, Dr. Oglethorpe, but like I said, they might be a while,” and she rests her palm on his wrist. “Please, call me Valerie,” she tells him. “We are neighbors, after all.”

[kamorth]

This is how they're addressing homelessness in BC now.

Right at the start of the pandemic our apartment building burned down. At 4.30 am in April 2020 the cheapest privately owned housing option in our town vanished and 87 people (officially, they didn't count people who weren't on the horrendously neglected tenancy contracts) were rendered homeless right as the whole world was settling in to isolate at home. Since it was the only affordable building for most of us and the housing crisis had really kicked off here by then (we were paying $850 and had been in that specific unit for about 10 months and they were trying to rent out identical units for $1200 when the fire happened), a HUGE number of us were unable to find housing that we could afford. There were other obstacles too, like property owners refusing to rent to Indigenous people, immigrants, Queer people (including roommates because everyone knows adults never live with other adults unless they're fucking, right?), people with mental health or addiction issues, or just people whose previous address was that building. We had people publicly stating they wished the tenants had all gotten stuck inside when it went up. (The only people who almost got stuck were the ones in wheelchairs because the building was disgusting about accessibility but fortunately they were both rescued by firefighters and their chairs were recovered within a couple of days.) This meant that of the 87 of us, 82 could not find housing. The 5 that did moved back to their respective reserves. We spent 4 months living in a hotel. With no kitchen facilities we ended up spending roughly $4000 on food over the 4 months. We were really really lucky with that, if it hadn't been for Neil Gaiman sharing our gofundme post, the four of us and the few neighbours we were able to help occasionally would have starved.

Also fortunately, we live in BC, which at the time had the ONLY non-conservative provincial government in Canada.

BC Housing bought a motel on the edge of town. They moved us into that as a temporary but longer term solution. 2 years later, most of us are still living here. The complex is easy to maintain and the people who didn't fit (like the solo mum with 4 kids jammed into a 2 bedroom motel suite) have mostly been moved to BC Housing complexes that have more space. We've also lost a few to illness and injury. The empty units have been filled with single adults and childless couples, the two biggest groups who usually get denied government housing here in town. All the other complexes are specifically for families or physically disabled vets and they all have massive wait lists.

Living in a motel sounds horrible to most people. The units are small and they have no storage. The property is open so people who don't live here are constantly wandering through and helping themselves to anything that isn't bolted down. 2 years later we STILL get people knocking on our bedroom windows to ask where they can rent a room for the night at 8pm.

But most of the people here now have no interest in leaving. When all you need is a bachelor suite or studio apartment, a motel unit with a kitchenette is PERFECT. All the units are easily accessible to emergency responders because they had to be by law when it was a motel. We have a lot of communal shared facilities like an exercise room, laundromat, gardens, and a large meeting room with an almost commercial kitchen attached. There's a charity run vending machine next to the mailboxes.

Best of all we have a community. There are people here who help take care of those who need it. Had a fall and can't cook for yourself? No worries what do you feel like eating there are 5 different people willing to feed you and they all made something different. Need some motivation for spring cleaning? One of the 20something tenants got a mountain of discontinued cleaning supplies from work and he's asking what you need out of it. Sometimes it's just oh hi you exist yay! Do you like salmon/elk/moose? My band just filled my chest freezer up and I need to make space here have several kg of each. You're out of weed? Come sit outside with us and laugh about how the world is circling the drain so that the loneliness gets pushed back for a while.

Yeah this works. It's not an ideal solution but it's one that's easy to implement quickly.

It saves lives.

“People experiencing homelessness who have physical disabilities or chronic health conditions also benefit greatly from non-congregate shelter settings…" 

[rhetoricandlogic]

The Thing In the Walls Wants Your Small Change

by Virginia M Mohlere

The penny was gone again.

Caro huffed and dropped her grocery bags in the hall. She reached in, took a penny from the change bowl by the door, and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger, said Nana’s charm for the house spirits, to keep them happy and home.

She blew on the penny and tucked it down by the threshold.

Five days she’d lived here, and seven times the penny had been gone, either in the morning or after she returned from an errand. The apartment didn’t set off her Spooky Senses, but the penny thing was weird.

Nana was unsympathetic.

“Girl, you got house spirits with expensive taste,” she said, laughing. “That’s what you get, moving yourself where everything’s snow and concrete. Down here the house spirits know us. They miss you.”

“Nana. That’s you missing me,” Caro said, guilt eating at her just a tiny bit.

Just a tiny bit: mostly, she was still pinching herself that everything had worked out so smoothly: this cute little apartment with southern exposure, high tin ceilings, and a dark-stained, carved sideboard set into the dining/living room wall that she loved so much she wanted to lie down on top of it despite its sticking drawers. This ridiculous neighborhood that was like something out of a romantic comedy, with its painfully adorable coffee shops, blocks of grey stone townhouses, and ethnic restaurants entirely outside the dreams of most other people from Pointe Coupee Parish.

And the job. Hired from across the dang country to write cybersecurity algorithms for enough money that the offer letter had made her choke, when surely there were a thousand coders nearby who’d have jumped at the chance. After 2 weeks, she still half expected that to show up at the address every morning and find an empty lot. It was too hard to believe this was all real.

“Yes, it’s me missing you, baby. Every old minute. But you know I’m happy for you.”

“I know, Nana.”

“Your mama keeps asking after you.”

And there was the familiar sensation of acid boiling up into her sternum.

“Nana, you won’t –“

“I won’t, baby. I won’t ever give her your number, I promise. I do keep telling her you’re happy as can be.”

Caro laughed.

“That must make her furious.”

Nana laughed too, but high-pitched, tense.

“That it does. Don’t you let that snake I birthed hurt you all that way away. You go to your fancy job and show them how lucky they are to have you, and call me on the iPad on Sunday so I can see your face.”

“Love you Nana.”

“Love you, baby.”

The penny was gone again in the morning. Caro rolled her eyes and put another one down.

It was the biggest mystery of her new life in Chicago – which, as troubles go, she was not going to complain about. It wasn’t like an extra half-dollar or so each month to appease her greedy house ghost was going to crack her budget, but it vexed her.

Well. And there was that scratchy sound behind the wall in the back hallway, next to the bathroom.

“No way, I spray once a season,” her landlord said. “Sorry, kid, it’s just an old building. It makes noises.”

Which was okay.

“It’s rats in the walls. Every building has them. Anybody ever tell you about the super-rats from the eighties? They were the size of cats. My cousin knew a family whose dog got killed by one.”

This not-okay statement solidified Troy from sales as The Office Asshole. Poor guy, he seemed so shocked when his follow-up invitation for shots after work got shot down. Ha ha.

Still: rats. Was there anything more gross than rats? Every time she heard that faint scritch behind the wall it made her spine feel like a spaghetti noodle. Was it enough to give up the sideboard? Was it enough to give up her three-block walk to the train? Or the taco stand two doors down?

She stood in the hallway, staring down at the wall panel, waiting. Wasted hours this way, it was so stupid.

It was easy to spend long days at work, avoiding her apartment and the scritch. It was easy to take long walks on weekends. She found an endless supply of cute boutiques and tasty stuff to eat. She learned her way around St. Bran’s so thoroughly that she was almost grateful to the scritch for driving her outside.

Her neighbors in the other five apartments were a quiet bunch – she almost never saw them, other than brief greetings at the mailbox or holding the front door open. Seemed like maybe two couples, a guy her age, an older woman, and someone on the third floor who listened to a lot of classical music but never left the building.

Caro found herself in the laundry room with the older woman on a Saturday morning, having just heard a particularly loud, long scratching sound and something almost like a purr.

“Rats?” the woman said in answer to her question.

She frowned with soft eyes, as if thinking hard. When she shook her head, the beads in her long grey dreads clacked.

“No, I can’t see rats. It’s an old building, sure, but this is a clean place. Protected.”

Protected?

Then the woman grinned and squeezed Caro’s bicep in a strong grip.

“You’d be more likely to find, I don’t know. Borrowers in the walls. Did you ever read that book when you were little? That wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”

She pulled her clothes – ancient jeans, calico smocks, and faded concert t-shirts – out of the dryer and laughed to herself.

“Borrowers in the walls,” the woman said, “that’s good. I’m going to use that.”

Caro shrugged after her.

It made her feel better, though, that her neighbor couldn’t “see” rats. To someone who went to the actual bank to get rolls of pennies for house spirits, it didn’t even sound so weird. She looked up Borrowers and wished that her eight-year-old self had read the books. Tiny people in the walls who collected junk and put it to ingenious use. That would’ve been like holding a piece of Nana’s old trailer with her, back in the days before Nana got custody.

Back in the days when she hadn’t had any possessions she couldn’t sleep in, on, or around without their disappearing into vodka bottles or the garbage or the toilet. So a book wouldn’t have lasted long anyhow.

She went so far as to actually speak to the cute girl at the gym, whose name – Aly – even turned out to be cute. The first time they went for drinks, Caro stumbled home drunk enough that when she fumbled emptying her jacket pockets and all her change spilled to the floor, she thought ‘screw it’ and went to bed.

The change was gone in the morning.

God dang. It had been like seventy cents.

Caro heard the scritch and the little purr-sound and knocked one knuckle sharply into the wall panel. The resulting silence was full. Whatever was frozen on the other side of the wall, possibly praying that she had run into the wall by mistake, was too smart for standard rodentia.

“Hey,” she said, “don’t get greedy.”

The penny by the doorjamb stayed for three days, then disappeared. Caro laughed at the floor, pulled a penny out of the bowl, and said the charm.

“I see how it is,” she said to the panel in the back hallway, “you require regular offerings. I get it.”

She took to leaving pennies and nickels on the floor around the living room. As long as there was a coin or two hanging around on the floor, the luck penny stayed by the front door.

“See? You’ve worked things out,” Nana laughed into the phone. “Though what a house ghost wants with that much currency I can’t imagine.”

In October, Caro came down with a bad case of the flu and didn’t leave the apartment for eight days straight. Takeout and an emergency drop-off of oatmeal and cans of soup from Aly saved her life, but mostly she lay on the couch, alternately shivering and sweating, wishing she’d ever bothered to buy a cable package or at least a charging cable for her iPad that reached all the way to the couch.

She almost called Aly for a ride to the emergency room on day four when she woke from a nap and hallucinated a small black creature in the middle of the floor, picking up a nickel and running down the hallway.

Still, there was no denying when she woke up later that the nickel was gone.

Caro couldn’t blame it on the flu when she woke from a Saturday-afternoon nap three weeks later and saw it again, sitting by her desk with a penny in each. In each claw.

The thing froze when she inhaled; Caro willed her body to relax and closed her eyes to slits. Her heartbeat was fast as a bird’s, but she held herself still, hopefully as if she remained asleep.

The thing blinked its red eyes twice, then looked back down at the pennies it held. It made the purring sound she had twice heard behind the wall.

She figured she could probably hold it in her two cupped palms: it was the size of a kitten, the color of charcoal, with a triangle-shaped head and two greenish horn-things curling over the top.

It was obviously a dragon. The tiniest, cutest, most ridiculous dragon any person could imagine, which Caro was obviously doing, because dragons were obviously imaginary. Except for the part where it held a penny in each forelimb. Except for the part where it shoved both pennies into its pointy little jaw and galloped across the room to the back hallway.

Except for the part where something had been taking her loose change for the past three months and scritching behind the wall.

Caro tried to see it again. She left change all over the floor and pretended to take naps almost daily, but though she heard it behind the wall, the little sucker remained elusive. She knocked on the wall once and pitched her voice to be as gentle as possible when she said,

“Hey, it’s okay to come out. I won’t hurt you.”

Silence – and all the coins remained on the floor for a couple of days after.

She learned that value wasn’t the creature’s priority: it liked pennies best, followed by nickels. Dimes and subway tokens would stay on the floor until they were the only things remaining. She got a Canadian penny among her change once; that was snapped up. It preferred shiny pennies to dull ones.

Emergency life-saving via oatmeal caused Aly to appoint herself Boss Of Caro, which sucked at the gym (so many reps) but had its own advantages, aside from Aly’s fundamental cuteness. She pitched enough of a fit when she found out that Caro wasn’t going home for Thanksgiving that several of the dudebro lifters glowered in their direction. She arrived outside Caro’s building at nine a.m. for the drive out to River Forest. Caro brought a bottle of wine and flowers and tried to treat it as a cultural expedition, eating turkey without any cayenne on it, dressing made of bread instead of rice, and not one oyster on the table.

Caro called Nana during the break between dinner and dessert, when Aly and her dad were setting up trays in front of the football game on TV. If she hadn’t been at a stranger’s house, Caro would’ve thrown up on the carpet when Nana answered the phone with their code phrase, “I’m sorry, I don’t make donations over the phone, but thank you for calling.”

Mama was there.

“You all right, honey?” Aly’s mom asked.

Caro took the plates out of her hands and used to walk to the living room to calm herself down.

Over the long Thanksgiving holiday, Caro holed herself up with leftovers from Aly’s family dinner and banished all motherly thoughts by trying to draw the dragon out, making a trail of pennies down the hallway that led to a highly polished quarter laid just inside her bedroom door. She turned off all the lights at 8:30 and climbed into bed, wedged among pillows, her blankets swirled around with only one eye uncovered but a clear view of the hall and the doorway.

It was over an hour, easy – more than enough time for her limbs to ache with the desire to sleep. Finally, she heard a creak, a scratch, and a sound that might have been sniffing. The little dragon ran down the hallway and skidded to a stop right in front of her doorway. It was almost impossible to see when it was still – just a shadow in the darkness – but she could hear it sniffing. When it walked forward, she could see its little hunched shape, its tail.

She could hear when it found the stack of pennies just inside the living room.

“Rar!”

Its voice was high-pitched and creaky, almost like a dog’s squeaker toy, and it took every drop of Caro’s willpower not to laugh at the sound.

“Rar rar!”

And happy Thanksgiving to you too, she thought.

It ran back and forth eight times, carrying the pennies to its home behind her bathroom wall, humming to itself the whole time.

It left the ones closest to her bedroom door for last, standing up on its hind legs in a posture so cute that Caro wanted to curl up into a ball, tilting its head back and forth and sniffing.

“Raaaaar,” it hummed softly.

The dragon crept into her room, one foot at a time, peering up at the bed between steps, while Caro held herself completely still.

It stopped in front of the quarter and stared down. Sniffed. Bent to touch the coin with the pointy bit of its face. Did it lick the coin? Caro hoped it licked it.

“Haaaaaa,” the little dragon breathed.

It picked up the quarter and put it in its mouth, but the coin dropped to the floor with a clink. The dragon froze, staring at the bed. Caro did her best impersonation of a rock.

After half a dozen breaths, the dragon reached down again and picked up the quarter. It shoved the coin back in its mouth and held it in place with one forelimb, then hobbled out of the room on three legs.

Once it was gone, Caro curled up and put both hands over her face. What even was this? If her life got any cuter she might not survive it.

“A dragon,” Nana said the next day, her skepticism so strong it would’ve curdled the cord on a landline.

“I swear! A dragon the size of a kitten.”

“Sweetheart, you sure you didn’t drink too much at your friend’s house?”

“Nana. I’ve seen it three times. It’s what kept taking my spirit penny! I’ve been leaving coins out for it for months! I wish I could get a photo of it, you would not believe it.”

“I don’t believe it, baby.”

“Nana,” Caro groaned. “How is this any weirder than your spirit pennies and all your red strings with knots in them and that gross jar full of herbs that’s as old as me?”

“Don’t you bad-mouth my binding jar, it’s what keeps your mama from making even more trouble.”

“Uh huh. And?”

Caro knew the expression Nana was making back at home – lips pressed together so the places where her pink lipstick had feathered up into the wrinkles around her mouth stood out, eyes narrowed behind her gold-rimmed glasses.

Caro noted a trend toward her own face doing the same thing.

Oops.

“Well. I guess I don’t want to call my best grandbaby a crazy person. Are you sure it doesn’t mean you any harm?” Nana said finally.

“One hundred percent. It’s only interested in money.”

Nana laughed.

“Well that’s true of lots of folks! You ever left a dollar bill out for it?”

“No!”

Once she bought in, Nana had a dozen questions about the little dragon. She laughed again when Caro tried to imitate its squeaky voice.

“Aw, baby, I still don’t know how this can be, but damn me if that don’t sound like a pure delight. Who knew such things could live under the sun.”

Nana pitched her voice lower.

“And you know if we both have to spend our time with dragons, at least yours is a cute one.”

Caro couldn’t make much of a laugh at that one. Mama had shown no sign of leaving Nana’s house. At this rate, Caro wouldn’t be able to ever go home again.

Caro heard a series of sharp, muffled thunks over the phone, followed by,

“The hell you out there doing, Mama? You’re out of cooking sherry.”

Caro hadn’t heard her mother’s voice in three years, but even over a phone line and through a closed door, she could hear the telltale burr that the cooking sherry had gone done Mama’s gullet. She wondered whether it was the old bottle that had sat at the back of Nana’s cabinet for as long as she could remember.

Was it too much to hope that it had turned to poison?

“Don’t you worry, Betsy,” Nana bellowed into the phone, making sure Mama would hear every word, “I don’t mind a bit doing the altar on Sunday. You just rest that ankle. I’ll be there at seven-thirty sharp.”

“Gawd,” Mama said.

“Got it,” Caro said. “I’ll call you then. I love you.”

“You bet.”

Caro sat on the floor by the bathroom door to have her cry. She didn’t mean to scare the little dragon, but she didn’t want to feel alone.

Her phone rang on Saturday afternoon – Nana must’ve slipped out to the grocery store.

“You okay?” Caro asked when she answered.

There was a long pause, then.

“Huh.”

She registered that it was Mama’s voice just as the phone beeped to signal the line being cut off.

Crap.

She called Nana at 7:34 the next morning, and Nana picked up on the first ring.

“Caro.”

“Nana, are you all right?”

“Sweetie, I am so sorry. I’ve been so good about keeping my phone on me, I just let it go for a minute.”

“Nana. Are you okay.”

Oh, the pause was too long.

“What did she do?”

“I’m fine, baby.”

“Nana.”

“It was just one cigarette and I got butter right on it, my hand’ll be fine.”

Caro sat down on the floor.

“Honey, I’m fine. I swear.”

“Nana, you have to make her leave.”

“Well, baby, I think I did. I spent last night at your aunt Betsy’s house, and we’re headed back to the house after church with Pere John and Sheriff Huntley to make sure. Sheriff’s got a locksmith friend who’s coming out to change all the locks and help me fix up my windows. But Caro, baby. Your address was in my phone.”

Caro lost all ability to remain vertical and lay on the floor.

“You should get a different phone, baby.”

Caro’s belly dropped at that tone. It wasn’t one she heard very often. Nana tried hard not to let her down. But it happened. Nana wasn’t a superhero.

“What else, Nana?”

“Baby, I’m sorry.”

“I know you are, Nana. What else?”

“You know I always kept my Christmas tin in the same place.”

Always. Caro had stolen from it once or twice – never more than a couple of dollars for candy, until the day Nana caught her and said “don’t be like your Mama, Caro. The road’s too hard.”

She’d never touched it again, and it wasn’t because of a hard damn road.

“She’ll probably drink it all up, sweetheart.”

“Was it enough for bus fare?”

“It was.”

There was a long silence. Caro enjoyed how cold and hard the floor was. She was glad she hadn’t gotten around to buying a rug. Her shoulder blades ached against the wood, so there was one part of her not filled up with sickness and worry.

“She’ll probably drink it all up,” Nana repeated.

Probably. But not certainly.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” Nana said.

“I know.”

Then she remembered her manners.

“It’s okay, Nana. You didn’t do anything.”

“That’s half the trouble, isn’t it?”

Caro would never agree to that aloud.

“Let’s just hope you’re right and she goes on a bender in Baton Rouge.”

“I love you, sweetheart,” Nana said, her voice miserable.

“I love you too. I’ll send you my new number.”

She turned the phone off. No use in courting trouble.

But she wasn’t going to sleep, not with the idea that Mama might show up at the door, expecting food, booze, the bed, to be the center of all attention. To have her every whim obliged on pain of broken bones, property destruction, and plain viciousness.

Caro watched TV (looked at the TV without registering what was on it) for several hours, until her eyes felt coated in sand. She had gone through hungry and out the other side to a queasy exhaustion.

How Mama would laugh at all the change on the floor. Before she picked it all up and pocketed it.

Caro reached for her wallet on the table next to the sofa. She had five quarters in the change pocket. She tossed them onto the floor in front of the sofa and wrapped up in the quilt aunt Betsy made for her high school graduation. May as well make a little happiness in the house.

And boy howdy did she. She dozed a bit, so she had no idea how much time had passed by the time she woke to see the little dragon hopping around the quarters on its little claws. She had always thought the word “scamper” was a dumb word, until she saw it in action by a miniature imaginary creature.

“Rar raaaaar!” it squeaked.

And she couldn’t help the choked-off sob she made – it was such a relief to see happiness.

The dragon froze and stared at her. Caro stared back, keeping her hands inside the quilt and her head still, but not bothering to hide her face.

After a long pause, the dragon blinked at her, titled its head back and forth. She blinked back.

It sniffed. Caro sniffed.

The dragon laid one claw experimentally on a quarter, and Caro blinked again.

“Go ahead,” she said in a soft voice.

The dragon startled, but it didn’t move. It tilted its head again.

“They’re for you. Take them.”

It waited a long time, moving its claw fractionally, until the moment when it lifted the quarter to its mouth and skittered on three legs down the back hallway. She thought maybe she had scared it for good, given the length of quiet afterward. Long after she’d given up, she saw it creeping along on the floor, hunched down, its triangular head angling toward her as it passed.

The knot in her chest let go. The dragon went totally still when she sniffed in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the tears rolling out of her.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I’m just really glad you came back.”

The little dragon huffed at her. Caro wiped her face on the quilt, and by the time she looked up, the dragon was gone with a second quarter.

It didn’t hesitate to come back for the third one. By the fifth one, it didn’t even pause. It sauntered casually past the sofa and lifted the coin straight to its mouth.

“Rrr!” it squeaked.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and it was enough to let her sleep.

The knock she dreaded came two days later. She’d had a very uncomfortable conversation with her boss, who shocked Caro to her bones by calling HR on speakerphone and asking them to get started on transferring Caro’s desk to the badge-only floor.

“Do you have a picture of her?” he asked. “Get one to security and they’ll make sure she doesn’t get in the building. You want somebody to travel back and forth with you?”

Caro cried a little bit, much to her horror.

“Look, I don’t care how much you try to pull this ‘y’all don’t bother about lil ole me’ crap,” Aly said at the gym. “I’m coming over on Saturday, and I’m staying until you find out for sure that you’re not getting any unwanted visitors. Pay me in pancakes.”

That had made her cry a little again.

So she had a little steel in her spine by the time the door rattled. Was a fifteen-year-old restraining order from Louisiana in force in Chicago? She had no idea.

“Caroline, it’s your mama, open up!”

Caro tried to will herself to grasp the doorknob and was unsuccessful.

“Caroline! I saw the light on, I’ve been traveling a whole day and night, darlin, don’t you want to see your mama after all this time?”

She pounded on the door again.

“Open the fucking door, Caroline.”

Her neighbors would be able to hear all this. Her neighbors seemed like nice people. They’d try to help, if they thought there was trouble. Trying to get between Mama and what she wanted was a great way to get hurt.

She opened the door. The grimace on Mama’s face morphed into something like a smile.

“Caroline.”

She pushed past Caro into the living room and looked around, clearly displeased. She was still taller than Caro, still broad-shouldered. But her skin hung loose on her frame, aside from her round belly, and she looked a decade older than her early fifties.

Friends ought to take care of one another, Caro thought.

Mama’s best friend, ethanol, didn’t take good care of anybody.

“The hell kind of dump is this?” Mama said. “Can’t afford anything modern?”

Caro remembered that she was a grown-ass adult and not a terrified elementary schooler.

“You’re more than welcome not to stay,” she said.

Mama rounded on her with a well-remembered expression: narrow eyes, lower jaw jutted out, cheeks dark with more than the standard burst capillaries.

“What makes you think you can talk to me that way?” she said, grabbing Caro’s arm. “I’m your mother, you show some respect.”

Caro shrugged hard, trying to pull her arm free, but Mama’s grip was as fierce as her snarl.

“Don’t you fight me, girl, I know every trick you’ve got.”

“Let me go.”

“You don’t tell me what to do, Caroline.”

“You let me go!”

Caro pulled. Her instant of calm had devolved into the weak-kneed helplessness that dogged her every time she saw her mother. She heard her own breath. She would lose. She always lost. Mama was a juggernaut. Everything fell down in her presence. Everything had always fallen down.

“You straighten up now, girl, I won’t have –“

Mama’s face went vaguely green, her eyes wide. A calm corner of Caro’s mind saw that the sclera were yellow.

“What,” Mama croaked, looking over Caro’s shoulder.

“Rrrrrrr!”

Caro turned. The little dragon was barely three feet away from them, tiny white teeth bared and its back end wriggling like a cat about to pounce.

“No! No, run!” she yelled, pulling so hard that she wrenched her arm free, although the sleeve of her sweater tore.

The dragon hissed.

“The hell is that,” Mama whispered.

“Oh, don’t,” Caro said, then backpedaled when the dragon jumped.

She landed hard on her butt and stayed planted, mouth open, while the dragon leapt at Mama’s knees, banked off them, whirled around on the floor, and jumped again, making its squeaky growl the whole time. Its little claws stuck in Mama’s clothing while it climbed her, shrieking in a rasp. Mama stayed frozen and gaping until it reached waist height, then she batted at it and cried out.

The dragon latched onto her hand with its mouth; Mama yelled again and waved her arm. The dragon let go, arched in mid-air, and landed on her shoulder, scrabbling around on her back while Mama pounded her own shoulders, turning in a circle. The dragon kept squeaking “rar rar” and head-butting her between the shoulder blades. Caro could see little spots of blood along Mama’s arms and seeping through her shirt. The dragon moved so fast that sometimes it was a blur, crawling up and down Mama’s body, pausing only to head-butt her or bite.

“The hell is this?” Mama yelled, “What the hell is going on?”

The dragon hopped onto Mama’s shoulder and dug in, then clamped its jaws around her earlobe.

Mama screamed.

Caro felt a vast hysteria rising up from her guts.

Over the sound of Mama’s shouts and the dragon’s squeaks, Caro heard a firm knock at the door and a muffled voice,

“Neighbor? Everything all right in there?”

Whatever this was, she could answer that question.

“No!” she shouted, “it’s not!”

The door slammed inward, and the non-rat-seeing neighbor jumped inside, her dreadlocks flying like Medusa’s own snakes. She glanced from Mama, to Caro, back to Mama again.

“What?”

“Get this damn thing off me!” Mama yelled.

The dragon squeaked one more time for good measure, then dropped to the ground. Mama lunged for it; it scrabbled briefly against the wood floor and took off for the hallway. Caro lunged to get between it and Mama –

Who was on her knees, her arms pinned back by the neighbor, eyes wide, her chin shiny with spit.

“What was it?” Mama said in a hoarse voice.

“Are you all right, sweetie?”

There was no sign of that dreamy look in her neighbor’s eye: this glance was all business.

“I’m okay. I’m not hurt,” Caro said.

And then, “I’m not hurt,” with a laugh.

“The hell was it?”

“I think you should leave now,” the neighbor said, tugging so that Mama grunted and climbed to her feet with a stumble.

“What was it?”

“I can tell by your voice you’re not from here,” the neighbor said. “Why don’t you get on home, now?”

“She came on the bus,” Caro said.

Mama had left a bag in the hallway. There was a return bus ticket in the side pocket. Open ended. Of course.

“Are you stupid?” Mama barked when the artist crowded her into the hallway and pressed the ticket into her hand. “Didn’t you see that thing?”

“This is a safe place,” the neighbor said, staring up at Mama. “Protected. I don’t think you’re a very safe person. You should leave now.”

“I’m not damn well –“

Must’ve been some kind of martial arts training. Anyhow, whatever the artist did to Mama’s elbow, Mama went down the stairs with her and out the door.

“I’m not leaving my daughter in this hell hole with some kind of goddamn monster,” Mama said at the end.

The dramatic intensity of this was greatly lessened by her saying it through a cab window.

“Oh, I think you are,” the neighbor said. “I think you’re leaving her here for good.”

She slapped the cab, and it left.

“Well!” she said, “sorry about your door! I’ll make sure Mike knows to put that on my rent and not yours.”

“I don’t even know how to thank you,” Caro said.

“Oh honey,” the neighbor said. “Just bake me some brownies or something some time. It all comes out in the wash.”

She peered into Caro’s apartment on the way back upstairs.

“I didn’t know this place was protected quite so literally. I’m definitely going to use that.”

Caro lay on the floor in front of her sofa and took a while to alternate between hysterical laughter and hysterical sobs. It seemed the thing to do.

When her voice felt as if it might be trustworthy, she called Nana, who took her own turns between laughing and crying during the high points of the story and set Caro off again.

Caro didn’t see the dragon the first night, and fretted. The second night, she put down coins and sat on the sofa. The dragon came out a couple of hours after dark, walking slowly.

“Are you okay?” she whispered.

The dragon swiveled its little head toward her and heaved a squeaky sigh.

It looked around at the coins on the floor and sighed again; put a penny in its mouth and walked slowly toward the back hallway, exhaustion plain in every scale on its tiny body.

“Oh!” Caro said, and put her hands to her chest, laughed a little.

She gathered up the coins and took them to the hallway next to the bathroom door.

“Rrr!” the dragon squeaked when it saw her sitting there, the coins in her hands. But it took them from her, one by one, disappearing in between into a shadow under the sink that during daytime was a plain piece of wall. Up close, its body was hot, and it smelled of copper.

“Hff!” it sniffed when it took the last one.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Go get some rest.”

“Oh baby, I know it’s all my fault,” Nana said on the phone the next day.“I just couldn’t stop her.”

“It’s okay, Nana. It’s all okay.”

“How are you going to thank your little friend?”

“I’ve got a good plan.”

She went to the bank and stood in line to see an actual teller. Slid a twenty across the counter.

“I’d like to exchange this, please, for dollar coins. The gold Sacagawea ones, if you have them.”