#wood and stone cocktail table

[samanthamayorofgothem]

Living Room Indianapolis Example of a medium-sized transitional formal living room with an enclosed medium tone wood floor, multicolored walls, a brick fireplace, and no television.

[sh-inaam]

Transitional Living Room in Indianapolis

Example of a medium-sized transitional formal living room with an enclosed medium tone wood floor, multicolored walls, a brick fireplace, and no television.

[aarikawolfnews]

Wilmington Formal Living room - mid-sized coastal formal and open concept living room idea with medium tone wood floor and brown floor, gray walls, a regular fireplace, and a tile fireplace.

[kazuos]

Sun Room Medium in Houston Ideas for a mid-sized, classic sunroom renovation

[visionify]

Dallas Enclosed

[iseestarsnation]

Family Room Open (Bridgeport)

[revolverthemes]

Rustic Family Room - Family Room

[forever-lunasea]

Living Room in San Francisco

[pascalpvnk]

Pour Choices // You & I

pairing: bartender!joel x f!afab!reader

summary: Austin, Texas was never a dream destination for you, however your work trip there might’ve changed your perspective of the Lone Star State, and it absolutely was not work related.

word count: 6.6k words (oops…)

warnings: 18+ MDNI, fluff, smut (dubcon [both drank alcohol], handjob if you squint, oral [f receiving], fingering, unprotected p in v sex [wrap it up!], Joel has had a vasectomy, premature ejaculation, double creampie, alluding to aftercare), possibly ooc, no outbreak AU, Joel is 36 with no specified age for reader, reader described as a woman, use of she/her pronouns, minor body descriptions (reader described as having curves, reader has hair long enough to grasp/pin up, reader is shorter than Joel, he picks up reader for like half a second), time jumping (indicated by solid orange divider), religious euphemisms (?) from Joel (i know that man has religious trauma), alcohol consumption, food consumption

a/n: hello! I know this is a long time coming but she’s finally here. thank you for being patient with me during this writing process and thank you to those who helped and encouraged me! a special thanks to @delicaatefl0vver for beta reading and supporting and adding to my thots. welcome to the rebirth of my fanfic writing. I hope you enjoy xx (dividers by @/saradika)

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Sat in the corner of the rustling bar, you were sipping on your Manhattan. The drink tasted medicinal, not how you’d usually prefer it. You had watched the young bartender pour heavy on the vermouth, but chose not to say anything. Red lipstick stained the rim of your glass with each sip of the cocktail. The whiskey mixed in and the maraschino cherry garnish were its only saving graces.

A low hanging light illuminated a warm hue across your features. You were surrounded by classic Texan bar decor and architecture; high ceiling rafters, support beams strung with fairy lights, the walls packed with framed posters of all varieties, the occasional beer branded neon sign, and license plates tacked up behind the bar. Two televisions sat flush against opposing walls, both playing a pregame show of Rangers highlights as they counted down to first pitch. The air was thick as the feet of the patrons shuffled around and chair legs scraped against the wood finished floors. Groups of friends, couples, and everyone between flooded through the doors, ushering themselves to an empty table or stool at the bar. Being there on a Friday night right as the outside rush hour died down was a bold choice, but you had one goal in mind.

The moment the music changed from country to rock and roll, you knew it was time to set yourself out to accomplish it.

The click of your high heels contrasted from the stomp of sneakers and cowboy boots. Glass in hand and head held high, your heart was pounding so hard in your chest, you felt it in your throat. You sure as hell weren’t living up to your stoic, stone cold hearted reputation back home. It’s almost as though your heart thawed in the Texas heat. Though your heart changed with the state, your attire didn’t. You stuck out like a sore thumb among the other consumers in your black maxi dress and perfectly pinned up hair. Some eyes gazed towards you, but you were set on finding one pair in particular. The set of eyes that were darker than the coffee he brewed, but the same ones that looked like honey when the sun was setting. The eyes that were facing away from you at the bar as you found a stool. The ones that snapped up towards you with one word.

“Texas.”

You called for him like a melody. Your throat immediately felt dry as a lump formed. He either felt the same way you did or it was a one off fling. You were hoping it was the former. But…it had been two years since you met, so there was a decent chance he was the one that got away.

The way his muscles tensed under his tight Henley gave away that he recognized you simply from your voice. Those beautiful eyes met yours, and his jaw went a little slack, the corners of his mouth curved.

“Evenin’, Miss New York,” Joel drawled, leaning against the counter. “How are ya, darlin’?”

Joel’s mind was preoccupied before he had seen you the first time, filled with important nonsense that about drove him up the wall.

Gotta make the next schedule. What time is that birthday party Sarah wants t’go to? Wonder if Tommy would be willin’ to take her. No, he’s workin’ on a job site out of town. I need to find someone to cover part of my shift so I can take her. Gotta pay the rent for this month. Can’t keep running the bar if s’gonna be slow like this and that bastard won’t cough up his half of it. God dammit.

“Welcome in, what can I get for ya?” The southern man drawled absentmindedly, tossing a rag over his broad shoulder. The moment his eyes caught yours, his worries washed away. He was only interested in you and your big, beautiful eyes and bright, red lips.

“Whiskey on the rocks. Make it a double please,” you practically sang to him…or at least it sounded like music to his ears. Your ID slipped out of your billfold with ease, and you slid it across the bar as you took a seat. Joel examined the horizontally wide piece of plastic, deciding it was real, especially for a lady ordering a whiskey. A lady from New York, no less.

Joel took in your features for a moment, noticing the difference in your attire and even your accent compared to the other bar patrons. Your beauty was striking to him, making all of the women he’s seen come in flee his memory. He repeated your name over and over in his head, wanting to know how it felt on his tongue. To say he was intrigued would be the understatement of the year.

“You got it, sweetheart,” he said, his voice deep and smooth. He poured a generous portion of whiskey into a cut crystal glass and added several cubes of ice, then slid it over to you with a smile. He leaned forward to rest his arms on the bar, eyes lingering on your curves. "So, what brings you in here tonight? The Big Apple too small for ya?"

“Work,” you responded simply, taking a sip from your drink. He watched as your eyes raked down his frame. There was no visible emotion behind them, so he was unsure if you were checking him out or simply giving him a once over.

Joel’s eyes on the other hand drank in your features, not even attempting to hide his gaze. It lingered across your chest and the way your dress contoured your breasts so perfectly. He was damn near drooling at the sight of you taking down your whiskey better than he would. Your face remained expressionless, zero signs of your mouth twisting in distaste. The simple action had him hooked.

He cleared his throat and began polishing some glasses as he continued to have small talk with you.

“Care to elaborate?” He asked, lining the cups along the bar as he shined them one by one.

“Flight just landed. I checked into my hotel and dropped off my stuff. Wanted to take a walk around to see what this city has to offer and I landed here,” you shrugged, taking another drink of your whiskey. “Nice place, are you the owner?”

“Co-owner, yeah,” Joel chuckled. “So I take it, your work stuff starts tomorrow? Or are you drinking on the job?”

“The former,” you smiled softly. “I’m not trying to get fired, they barely trusted me to come out here in the first place.”

His head nodded gingerly. He couldn’t quite tell if you were shooting him down or just quiet after a long day. He wanted to know more. Wanted as much information that he could get from you without coming off as a creep. Deciding to take a minor risk, he continued conversing with you.

“What kind of work are ya doing all the way out here, hm?” He asked politely, restocking the freshly polished glasses back on their designated shelves.

“My uh…my peer, I suppose, is on maternity leave and she represents most of our buildings in Texas. I’ve been doing most of the work over the phone but one of the Austin buildings required a visit. A lot of incident reports to go through.”

The whiskey in your glass was almost gone and he could tell it was opening you up a little bit. First time in the whole conversation you said more than what his question asked for.

“Darlin’, that’s some big wig stuff, and yet you make it sound so inconspicuous,” he drawled, a low rumble of laughter rolling from his chest. “What field are you in? Or is it top secret?”

“Oh! I work in HR,” you let out a small laugh. “Probably should’ve started with that.”

He smirked at how you fumbled over yourself, admiring the way your smile folded the skin around your eyes and exposed a dimple. He could definitely tell he was breaking down your stone wall. His eyes took you in once more. Your lip prints stained red on the once clean glass, immediately grabbing his attention. Arousal shot through his body, directing into his pants. That’s not something he knew he was attracted to.

“Need another, ma’am?” He asked politely and swallowed hard, attempting to look anywhere but your chest. You accepted his offer and opened a tab. Joel was thanking his lucky stars that the universe brought such a beautiful woman into his bar that night. Thanking fate for having him cover this shift.

“Well, I’ll leave you alone, miss. Just holler if you need another drink or y’wanna close out. My name’s Joel,” he smiled with his boyish charm, flipping his towel back over his shoulder before reluctantly diverting his attention to another customer in need.

You stuck around for a bit, snacking on peanuts and watching the baseball game running on the television. Joel felt your eyes burn into the back of his head as he worked.

It was innocent to start. He popped tops off of beers, poured shots, and shook cocktails all while his cheeks burned pink under the heat of your gaze. Then he intentionally reached up to the top shelf more often, flexing his muscles and letting his shirt ride up his back to grab your attention again and again. It became increasingly difficult for you to peel your eyes off of him the more you drank.

And he noticed.

A couple hours passed, and before you knew it, the clock was nearing midnight. Joel walked around the bar, going to each empty table and wiping them thoroughly. He restocked everything as most of the small crowd filed out. He took a look at you from the front door, admiring the curves that were hardly hidden under your snug dress as you watched the TV mindlessly.

“Well darlin’,” he began as he approached the bar again. “I don’t know what time you have to work in the morning but it’s getting late. Wanna close out your tab?”

“I s’pose so,” you chuckled, copying his accent a little by accident. Your tired, drunken smile made his heart flutter.

A small smile plastered itself across Joel’s face as he ran your card. He let it process, grabbing both receipts and scribbling something on them.

“Can I call you a cab, sweetheart? They aren’t driving around all the time like they do back home for you,” he offered, handing you the merchant copy receipt. He crossed out all of the options to tip, just requiring your signature. You tried to protest, but he silenced your argument.

“Yeah,” you hiccuped. “That would be nice, thank you.”

Joel examined you cleaning up your peanut shell debris as he called for the cab. You signed the receipt, and slid his copy back across the bar. He noticed your subtle smile as you noticed ten digits written neatly on the customer copy.

The line went dead when the conversation concluded, and Joel put the phone back on its charger. He noticed how you folded the receipt paper and tucked it safely into your clutch along with your debit card.

“Cab should be here in ‘bout ten minutes. Um,” he cleared his throat. “If ya need someone to recommend restaurants or if you want a tour of any sort, I hope that’ll come in handy.”

Joel gestured towards your clutch, the current home of his phone number. He wanted to ask you out, so so badly, but you were intoxicated and he didn’t want to give a bad impression. If it was meant to be, you’d take the initiative, at least that’s what he told himself.

“I bet it will,” you openly flirted. Joel knew better than to return the sentiment, but it was so damn difficult. His mama would’ve smacked him upside the head if he had, and that was enough to stop him. All he offered was a smirk before turning away and gathering dishes to be brought back to the pile of other used utensils.

“D’ya need a water or anything?” Joel asked, already reaching for a clean cup. You nodded and he filled the glass first with ice, followed with water and a straw. Laying a napkin on the counter, Joel gently set your water down with a close lipped smile.

“Thanks for stopping in, darlin’,” he said just loud enough to be heard over the rock music he had playing. “Get back to that hotel of yours safely, alright? Don’t wanna hear about Miss New York on the news. They never show anything positive nowadays.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” you chuckled, gathering your things to leave after drinking most of the glass. He took these moments to really take you in, dramatically telling himself that this could be the last time he’d ever see you. Last time he’d witness your cherry stained, stunning, yet intoxicated smile, your soft skin, and those gorgeous eyes.

His admiration was interrupted by the honk erupting from the impatient taxi driver’s vehicle outside. You turned on your heel, offering a ‘goodnight, Texas!’ before walking out the door. Joel scrubbed a hand across his beard, huffing a self deprecating laugh and a muttered ‘shit’ before continuing to close up shop. He beat himself up internally while cleaning the dishes until his phone buzzed. He dug the device from his pocket, flipping it open to see a text from an unknown number.

“Didn’t end up on the news. What a bummer! Maybe next time ;)”

Joel smiled to himself, tucking his phone back into his pocket. He finished his closing tasks and made a little to-go Shirley Temple mocktail for his daughter. Before exiting the building for the night, he turned off the glowing ‘Pour Choices’ sign and locked the door behind him. His smile faded as he left his bar behind, remembering his life’s reality and his responsibilities. Those stressors sat heavy once more upon his shoulders until he fell into a deep slumber that night.

Your first full day of work was exhausting to say the least, and the small hangover you suffered did not help one bit. And whoever decided you should come to Austin in August had become your own mortal enemy. You’re used to your mild summers back home, not sweating so much that your clothes stick to you uncomfortably. But the thing that bothered you the most was the imminent, distracting thought of Joel, especially as the sun retired behind the horizon. The way the fabric of his shirt pulled taut around his thick biceps and how they flexed every time he mixed up drinks. You had watched him use his charm to get tips practically thrown at him by the other patrons, he really put that handsome grin to work. 

You were alone in your hotel. There wasn’t a scheduled dinner with your team, so you sat in bed watching Scrubs reruns and eating what constituted your dinner: cheese, crackers and pepperoni slices you picked up from the grocery store. A little disassembled charcuterie board if you will.

Beckoning your attention, your phone buzzed against your nightstand. The caller ID had your heart pounding against your chest. Joel. It was almost like he could read your mind.

“Hello?” You started, wiping the crumbs off of your fingers and lowering the volume on the show. 

“Evenin’,” he drawled out your name. His voice came across gruffer and frankly hotter over the phone than in person. The way it fed directly into your ears had a chill running down your spine.

“Night off?” You asked nonchalantly, a sad attempt of remaining mysterious, knowing if he was sat next to you, you’d melt into a puddle.

“Mhm,” he hummed, pausing for a moment and chuckling quietly. “Sorry for callin’ late. I’d text but that would’a taken me a decade. How was today? Hope that whiskey didn’t ruin your morning.”

The smile you sported grew in size. It felt nice having a normal conversation that wasn’t work related…even if it was with someone you just met.

“It was good! Busy but good. I had a headache but nothing I couldn’t handle. It’s stupid hot here though, didn’t appreciate that,” you hummed to yourself in thought. “Nothing much happened, lots of meetings. Now I’m just hanging out in my hotel. How about you?”

“Same here, nothin’ much. Are ya doing anythin’ or just wallowin’ in your loneliness?” He teased, testing the waters a little. You wish you could see his face. See whether he was sporting a shit eating grin or if he was gnawing on his lip nervously.

“Ha-ha,” you shot back, pressing your cell between your cheek and shoulder to stand up and settle near the window. “I’m watching TV and eating my nutritious dinner of cheese, crackers and pepperoni, thank you very much.”

“Dinner?” He scoffed. “Now I think you need'ta hustle on over here and have a real meal. You can’t possibly be callin’ all ‘f those HR shots with that diet, hm?”

You gotta give it to him, you aren’t that smooth on a whim, that takes practice. Looking out at the Austin skyline, you snickered to yourself and leaned against the window’s frame. 

“C’mon, I have almost all of my food groups in front of me, I don’t think that’s too horrible,” you retaliated jokingly. “What do you have to offer, huh?”

“Well you got me there, darlin’. I do have wine if you wanna round out your meal,” he offered. You could hear faint tapping coming from the line. He was nervous. 

Considering the proposal, you decided to take it, despite your early morning and full day approaching. Joel offered to pick you up so you didn’t have to pay for another cab and you gratefully accepted. You quickly got changed back out of your sleepwear into something almost equally as comfy and perhaps a bit more revealing. 

So you find yourself sat on Joel Miller’s couch. The ride was fine, you chatted like before, but with a bit more direct flirting. You observed his spaces. His truck was simple, a little, beat up pickup, but you were sure it got his work done. There were scuff marks from tennis shoes on his dash. Your mind wandered as you imagined if they were from a friend or former lover, but you didn’t let it bother you.  

There was a little pine tree air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror. The smell of its woody scent combined with his warm, leathery cologne and a hint of Irish Spring all flooded your senses. And god, he didn’t just smell good, he looked so good.

Joel looked perfect in the driver’s seat, his biceps straining against his smooth skin as he gripped the wheel, prominent veins popping through his forearms. Looked so cozy in his small kitchen, pouring both of you a hefty glass of rosé. His hands enveloped his cup entirely as he brought it to his plush lips. The way they framed his teeth when he smiled down at you gave you heart palpitations.

And even sitting comfortably in the corner of his L-shaped couch, Joel continued to look amazing. His leg was crossed over the other, creating the perfect shelf on his knee for his wine. Those arms stretched far across the back of the couch as he fidgeted with a loose string stuck on the cushion. Everything about him screamed disciplined. The way his spaces were mostly neat, organized and decently decorated added to your observation. He belonged here, and it seemed like he worked hard to get the things he earned.

The casual facade you had faded away the longer you chatted about your lives and sipped on your glasses. Topics like work and hobbies came into conversation, and you learned that Joel liked to play with guitar and sing a little—only when he was alone of course. Then you began talking about more personal matters, like your relationship statuses. 

“You’re kidding!” You exclaimed, feeling warm from the wine in your system. “You don’t have a girlfriend or anything?”

Joel chuckled and shook his head down at the couch. You watched as he observed the cushions-worth of space between you two. By that point, you were fully turned ninety degrees to face him in conversation, your legs tucked comfortably under you. Your face felt hot as you wielded the half empty, stemless wine glass.  

“What about the kid in your pictures? Is she your niece or something?” You were referring to the framed photos both nailed to the wall and decorating the table in his entryway. Most of them contained himself and the child, whether she was celebrating with a soccer ball and a trophy or blowing out candles on a cake, her wild curls spilling every which way from her party hat.

“Nah, she’s all mine. My Sarah turned fourteen a few weeks ago,” he smiled to himself, making your heart clench and pound against the confines of your ribcage. The proud look he had on his face told you about everything you needed to know about his relationship with his daughter.

“Fourteen? You don’t seem old enough to have a teenager,” you chuckle. “Where is she tonight? Seems like you got the house to yourself.”

“Why I'm flattered. She’s got a friend’s birthday party sleepover thing. That’s why I had to take the night off. I’m her personal chauffeur, of course,” Joel offered a curtsey jokingly.

Your smile widened as you brought your now second glass of rosé up to sip once more. You don’t care to ask about Sarah’s mother, it was a personal matter and possibly a sensitive subject. 

A comfortable silence fell between you as you looked at one another. You watched the automatic rise and fall of his chest and the way his cheeks burned from your gaze. His chocolate eyes bore into yours, melting your heart without even trying. His exterior was gruff and masculine but he had proven time and time again that he was probably one of the kindest men you have met. Must be that southern charm and hospitality, but man was it addicting. 

“What?” He barely asked above a whisper, copying your actions with his wine. His attempt to hide his smile behind his clear cup obviously failed. His blush spread down his neck and you could only imagine if it went any farther down. Your thoughts of Joel were beginning to become tainted by your blooming arousal. You wanted him. On top of you, under you, you’d take anything and the growing wetness pooling in your panties was evidence of that. 

“Can I be blunt, Joel?” You grinned as you sunk a bit further into the cushion against your side. He responded with a hummed ‘mhm’ so you’d continue, bringing his hand back into his lap. The fabric of his joggers barely contained his strong thighs, making it more and more difficult to contain your urge to see what else lied beneath his pants.

“I really wanna kiss you,” you admitted cheekily, fairly certain that he was thinking the same thing. 

“Oh, do ya now?” He smirked, leaning over to pluck your glass from your grasp and put it safely on his coffee table along with his own.

“I think you’re a little mind reader,” Joel continued. “‘Cause I was thinkin’ the same thing. Bet those pretty lips are real soft.” His hand found your waist after you confirmed he had consent as he guided you onto his lap. You hummed contently as you draped your arms over his shoulders, toying with the stray, chestnut curls at his nape. 

“What happened to Mr. Shy Guy, huh?” You teased, letting his calloused hands explore the expanse of your back as your lips ghosted over his.

“Not shy, just polite, sweetheart,” he rasped before closing the gap between you two. His palms were flush against your lower back, radiating heat through the thin material of your shirt. 

You melted into him, bodies pressed as close as possible without your knees sinking between the couch cushions. Lips slotted together and hands wandered as you filled all of your senses with Joel. His tongue was stained with a familiar smoky taste, which was definitely not coming from the wine

“Why do you taste like whiskey?” Your mouth formed a smile against his matching one. His hand cupped your cheek as a chuckle rumbled deep in his chest.

“Had some before I called ya,” he admitted bashfully. “Doesn’t matter now.”

In an instant, he was kissing you once more with increased passion, making you completely forgo the subject. His tongue flicked into your mouth, teasing the delicate skin on the inside of your lips. He gripped at your hips, trying to pull you closer to him but your legs protested against his furniture.

“Scoot forward,” you mumbled against him. And he did what he was told. His hips shifted forward, granting you more room to sit directly on his lap. Sighs were drawn from both of you as you settled back into each other, his cock already half hard under you. Your fingers messed with the hair behind his ears, earning a pleased moan from him.

“This doesn’t have to go anywhere if you don’t wan’ it to,” he panted between kisses. Just above a whisper, you uttered, ‘I want it,’ and Joel’s hands took it as permission to explore further down your body, palming at your ass through your shorts.

A whimper slipped between your lips into Joel’s, and he swallowed it whole. He pressed your body closer to his, your clothed sex dragging over his sweatpants. His cock twitched up in response to your mouth finding his jaw, his short beard scratching against you.

“Lemme take care of you,” you mused, bringing your hands up the sides of his face. He relaxed back into the couch, his blunt nails pushing under your shorts into the meat of your bare thighs.

You started by kissing his lips once more, then the two prominent patches of missing hair on his chin, and made your way down to his throat. His adam's apple bobbed under your touch as pants grew tighter on him.

“Knew you’d have the best lips, fuck,” he mumbled as you licked up the side of his neck, his pulse racing under your tongue. “Can’t wait to feel your pretty pussy ‘round my cock, sweetheart.”

“Patience, handsome,” you whispered into his ear, your breath sending chills through his body. He let go of your legs as you bunched his shirt into your palms, sitting up to help remove it. Hair scattered sparsely on his chest, pausing on his upper stomach only to come back thicker as it disappeared into his boxers.

Your palms dragged down his torso, skimming over his nipples and ribs as he naturally recoiled from the stimulation. You gently kissed and sucked at his collarbone so it could be hidden away under his shirt. Color rose to the surface of his skin the more you worked at it, flattening your tongue against it once you decided your mark was left properly.

Joel was breathing heavily under you, his hands snaking under your shirt to your breasts. Your nipples were already pebbled through your bralette, becoming unbearably hard the moment Joel started running his thumbs over them. He gently pushed your shirt and bra above your tits, leaning forward to bring one to his mouth as his hand toyed with the other. His tongue lapped your skin, rounding the hardened nipple and sucking it back slightly. An image of him doing the same to your clit had your eyes rolling back with pleasure.

“Joel,” you mewled as he switched breasts. He spread his saliva around your areola as he picked up his ministrations on the other. A groan vibrated against your skin as your nails raked down his happy trail.

“Wanna suck your cock,” you continued, holding onto the waistbands of his pants and underwear. His unused hand covered yours entirely, pushing it down to free his throbbing cock from its confines, the tip weeping with precum. Never in your life had you seen a dick so big before, and you couldn’t wait for it to split you in half.

“I won’t last a minute in your mouth, sweet girl,” he drawled, reaching back up to leave a chaste kiss on your lips. “Don’t wanna come before you.”

Spitting onto your fingertips, you mixed it with the slick seeping from his tip then dragged it down his shaft, squeezing it in your palm on the way back up. Joel groaned into your neck. He wedged his hands back under your top, lifting it over your head and forcing your hand to leave his cock.

“Need’ta taste you first,” he muttered, his amber irises completely eclipsed by his pupils. Joel removed you from his lap and laid you down onto the couch. You watched as he settled between your legs and hooked his thick fingers into your bottoms, licking his lips. Raising your hips, he pulled everything off of you, leaving you bare. Cool air hit your glistening pussy, sending a shiver up your spine. You whined out his name after he stared at you for a moment.

“What?” He cooed, smoothing his hands over your inner thighs. “Wan’ me to touch ya, hm? Fuck you with my fingers ‘n stretch that pretty pussy out? Maybe suck on your clit. S’that what you want, darlin’?”

You nod your head furiously, dying with anticipation to have his hands, mouth, something on you. Wordlessly, your foot hooked around the back of his leg as you attempted to pull him closer to you.

“Ah ah,” he tsked. “I think ya gotta ask for it, honey. Ask for it nicely.”

“Fuck,” you whined with desperation. You could feel your arousal dripping down your ass and ultimately onto the couch. “Please fill me up, touch me, taste me, whatever you want.”

“Good, so good f’me. Open up,” he encouraged, slotting his first two digits between your lips. He spread them on each side of your tongue. Saliva collected on his thick fingers as you swirled your tongue around them in figure eights. A groan rumbled in Joel’s chest.

“Yeah I’m gonna put my cock in this pretty mouth next time, baby. Feels perfect on my fingers,” he grumbled. His fingers came out of your mouth with a pop, a string of spit connecting him to you. 

Joel finally slipped his fingers through your swollen folds, teasing your entrance and collecting more slick. His fingertips circled lightly around your clit, drawing a broken moan from your throat. His free hand tapped against your hip, signaling you to raise them with an ‘up.’ He grabbed a throw pillow and positioned it under you. You relaxed your already trembling legs, and he had barely even touched you.

He settled onto his stomach, spreading your legs apart as far as they’d go. A pointer finger breached your entrance as he kissed the seam where your thigh and pussy came together. Soft moans escaped you as you carded your fingers through his curls. His smug eyes met yours as his tongue moved everywhere but your clit. He looked better than ever between your legs, and you didn’t know that could be possible. His teasing was deserved for what you were doing previously, but it was agonizing.

“Please, Joel,” you groaned. “Please gimme more, I need you.”

Obliging to your request, Joel added another finger into your cunt, curling them both and stroking your g-spot expertly. All of the air left your lungs the moment his flattened tongue finally found your clit. Joel’s groan vibrated throughout your entire pussy, adding to each sensation deliciously. It didn’t take much more for your legs to start shaking and squeezing his head between your thighs, a hot sensation bubbling in your lower belly.

“Fuck, I’m gonna come, don’t stop,” you cried, grasping Joel’s hair much tighter than before. He suckled your clit and flicked his tongue over it with a moan, sending you flying over the edge. Your walls fluttered around his fingers and he rode you through your high. He kissed your trembling thighs until they relaxed, his unmoving fingers still stuffed inside you.

“God, you’re even sexier when you come, sugar. Taste even sweeter too,” he hummed, shifting himself up your body until his lips found yours again. He tasted still of whiskey but with a mix of your arousal.

Joel brought his now soaked fingers back into your mouth to replace his tongue, urging you to suck all of your spend off of them. You hummed around his digits and wrapped your quivering legs around his waist.

“And you were preachin’ to me about patience,” he teased, removing his fingers and stroking his cock a couple times. He was sitting up and resting on his heels, looking like pure sex. His proportions were perfect, he was broad and you’d happily let him crush you under his weight. 

“It’s hard to be patient when you look at me like that,” you muse, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth. Joel snickered quietly, dragging his nails over your inner thighs. Goosebumps followed behind his light touch and your legs twitched when he got close enough to your sensitive core.

“So,” Joel began, settling comfortably on top of you and kissing your jaw. “I haven’t been with anyone since I was tested last n’ I’ve had a vasectomy. But I’ll gladly get a condom if ya want me to.”

“Hmm, a gentleman,” you grinned, your fingers finding their way back into his hair as you enjoyed his affection. “I’m clean and more than okay without it.”

Joel slotted his cock into your slit with a smirk, groaning at the new sensation. His tip nudged at your clit with each pass, earning moans from both parties. 

“Almost came all over this couch with you clenchin’ ‘round my fingers like that, honey,” he drawled. “Fuck, ‘m not gonna last long.”

You gave him a reassuring kiss as you wedged your hand down between you two. Lining up his tip with your entrance, you watched as he disappeared into your welcoming cunt. His face pressed into your neck as he slowly sank into you, anchoring himself with his hands planted on your waist and thigh. Strings of profanities left him as he stretched you out, the pressure you felt quickly morphing into pleasure. 

“Shit,” you hissed when he bottomed out. “Feels so good, Joel.”

You urged him to continue, and he complied. Starting slow, he pulled out halfway and pushed back in to test the waters. The drag of your core had his toes curling. He wasn’t lying when he said he wouldn’t last long. His cock swelled in you after a few minutes as he panted into your neck. 

“Fuck, fuck I’m sorry,” he grunted.

“S’okay, come for me, Joel. Please,” you consoled him, wrapping your legs around his hips tighter. He spilled into you, the sticky fluid coating your inner walls. Your nails dragged along the expanse of his back as he caught his breath.

His face emerged from the crook of your neck, flush and sweaty. He tried apologizing once more but you shushed him. Your lips met again as you grasped his dampened curls, pulling at his locks harder than before. Cock stiffening up again, Joel resumed thrusting into you slowly. A squelching sound emitted from your pussy as his pace quickened.

“Joel,” you gasped, tangling yourself around him tighter. He took it as an opportunity to scoop you up and change positions, sitting on the couch and giving you the freedom to ride him. 

“Wan’ you comin’ on my cock, beautiful,” he moaned. His calloused fingertips circled your clit as he fucked his load deeper into you. You bounced on him, his cock spearing you. The tip hit your g-spot with each thrust. Stars sparkled in your vision as you clenched down on him hard.

“C’mon, use my cock, make yourself come. That’s it, fuck.”

His hips bucked up to meet yours halfway, the sound of skin slapping echoing throughout his living room. You were a moaning mess, chanting his name haphazardly. Your walls clamped down around him and milked any remaining cum from him as you both reached your second peaks.

“Christ,” he groaned, stilling inside of you. The mixture of your fluids seeped from your fluttering hole. Joel smoothed his palms over your sweat slick back, peppering kisses along your shoulders and collarbone. Praises flew from his mouth like a prayer and you were his goddess, all his to worship.

Joel used his sweatpants to catch any leakage as his softened cock slipped out from you. He took his time with you, helping you regain your composure with more kisses and lingering touches. You followed him to his room where he properly cleaned you up and gave you a Texas Longhorns shirt and boxer shorts.

“You’re more than welcome t’stay,” Joel offered. “Or I can drive ya back. Your choice, sweetheart.”

Your arms snaked up and around his shoulders, stretching yourself up on your tiptoes. A smile crept onto your face as Joel held you steady by your ass. You peeked over at his unmade bed with only two measly pillows, one of them crumpled up in the middle of his bed. A shy smile adorned his face as you refocused on him. He was going to be the death of you.

“Set an alarm and take me to bed, cowboy.”

Late into the following evening, you found yourself back in Pour Choices. A lingering soreness twinged between your legs the entire day. You weren’t there to drink. You wanted Joel.

He started his usual greeting until he realized you had stepped through the doors, another black dress clinging to your body and lips stained a deeper shade of red than before.

“Hey, darlin’,” he smiled breathlessly. You sauntered over to the bar, leaning in close and cutting to the chase in a seductive whisper.

“I’m gonna sit in the corner and wait for you to close up. Wanna return the favor from last night.”

Joel can confidently say that was his quickest close of his career, and you can just as confidently state that you successfully returned the favor, covering that poor man with crimson lip prints. He’d never complain about the physical reminder of you, using it as inspiration on the nights he craved you while you were away. He never thought he’d go from having everything from you for a couple weeks to having nothing for over a year.

“Wasn’t sure if you were gonna remember me,” you smiled softly, a twinge of sadness in your eyes. He chuckled and shook his head, grabbing a new glass and some ice.

“I could never forget you, sugar,” he smirked, grabbing a top shelf whiskey and pouring it into the glass. The crackle of the ice drew your attention. You were always a sucker for whiskey. He remembered.

“On the house, darlin’. Want me to take your other drink? Doesn’t seem like you enjoyed it,” Joel pointed to the condensation lined cup with the half dranken Manhattan. “I know you’re not the sipping type of gal.”

“Yeah, thank you,” you smiled brighter as he took away the used cup. “Y’all don’t make Manhattans like they do back home,” you jabbed, taking a big gulp of the chilled whiskey. Those familiar lip prints stamped on the glass.

“But,” you continued, glancing at his bare ring finger. You observed the sprouting grays in his sideburns and deepened creases on his face, seeing the effect that the last two years had on him. “Y’all have something that New York doesn’t.”

You traced the rim of the glass, trying to pick up any emotion from his expressionless face. He did however crack a small smirk at your comment and leaned against the bar with both hands. Suddenly it felt like everyone else disappeared and it was just you and him in the moment.

“Hm, and what’s that, sweetheart?” He leaned closer and replied softly, but just loud enough for only you to hear. 

“You, Joel.”

to keep up to date on upcoming parts, follow @pascalpvnk-writes and turn on notifications. thank you for reading!! <3

[jasfhercallejo]

If you’re a fan of dining with breathtaking views and don’t mind a bit of an extra journey, Lambojon Terraces La Canopée is the perfect place for you in Siquijor. 

La Canopée Bar and Restaurant is a hidden gem perched atop a mountain, providing diners with unparalleled views of Siquijor’s lush natural landscape and the glistening sea below. Nestled amidst the verdant surroundings, this enchanting eatery offers more than just delicious cuisine—it’s an immersive experience that allows guests to reconnect with nature while indulging in delectable dishes.

Whether you’re sipping on a refreshing cocktail or savoring a sumptuous meal, every moment spent at La Canopée is enriched by the breathtaking scenery that surrounds you. It’s the perfect destination for those seeking both culinary delights and soul-stirring vistas in the heart of Siquijor.

BuCafe or Bukid Cafe is a sustainable mountain side cafe and restaurant overlooking the mountainous area of Siquijor Island stretching to the ocean. It’s about ten minutes away from the closest main road. From the exterior, I could already tell that the cafe is nature-themed as it is evidently made of natural and local materials, predominantly bamboo. The structure reminded me of nipa kiosks, very common to have in a Filipino yard to entertain guests or to have a siesta.

There are shared tables overlooking the views as well as tables a bit far from the edge. If the seats are all occupied on the main floor, you can head downstairs for more seats and tables. The seats on the edge of the lower floor of the cafe requires you to sit on the floor and has a ledge for the legs to rest on.

Once seated, you can enjoy the view of Siquijor. It’s mostly greenery and the sea, but it was really beautiful and relaxing. We went there in the middle of the afternoon, but I think the place would be really beautiful during sunset.

From the islands of Siargao, to Siquijor, Cebu, and Bohol and across Asia, Shaka is probably one of our go to places. I've talked about Shaka in my other previous blogs, and this place really needs no further explanation. The food and drinks are refreshing, healthy, and surprisingly filling. We spent an hour just chilling here, and we had a good nap hearing the sound of the waves.

One consistent thing about Siquijor – the people emanate a positive energy and again were uber friendly.

Baha Ba’r (literally meaning “Flood Bar”) is nestled in the heart of Maite village, 1km south of San Juan town and 8km from Siquijor port. It is a restaurant / bar designed and built to reflect the traditional island wood designs with hints of the commonly seen Spanish influences and stone structures.

Baha Ba’r has a “loungey” informal laid-back atmosphere that welcomes overseas visitors and locals alike. It prides itself on having an extensive tapas style menu that permits you to experience the best flavours of the Philippines and great cocktail drinks menu. It is a wonderfully arranged wooden house with a discrete, chic atmosphere. Food is great!

Rum Bar is a sanctuary in its own right for people who want to disconnect from the frenzy of everyday life. It is well known for being the best place to relax on the beach while enjoying a wide selection of music. The bar prides itself on having a wide range of songs for any mood: whether you are in the mood for relaxing music to accompany you while you admire the sunset or livelier tunes to party until dawn.

We went here because we had a really fun time in Rumbar in Siargao. It did not disappoint.

[shebeafancyflapjack]

A Slip Through Worlds (Part 10)

Silver tries to get back home, away from @idiotwithanipad 's Gore AU.

-

The melody is familiar. But she can't place where.

Twirling beneath the arm of a seven foot tall Elven princess, Silver listens carefully the piece being plaid by the nymphs who make up the orchestral band at the side of the party. Several slow, gentle notes on a piano before the violins joined in. Different, but similar to something...

Her dance partner's long, pointed fingers squeeze her hand as she tugs Silver close against her ebony gown that sparkled like the stars against the vastness of space.

"I hope you're not distracted, sweet Lady." The ethereal creature with razor sharp ears smiles down at her; "We are ever so delighted you have agreed to stay."

Silver returns the smile, her knees turning to jelly a little again at the sight of the gorgeous humanoid woman. Elven girls had been her biggest fantasy crush, ever since her dad first read Fellowship of the Ring with her. Watching them come to life on the big screen two years before she died, Silver didn't think she'd come closer to an Elf princess than that.

She certainly didn't think she'd be dancing with one at a ball, surrounded by Fae and Vampires and other mythological beings, held in her arms beneath a moonlit sky while the band played...

Leading you down into my core

Where I've become so numb

Evanescence. They're playing Evanescence...at this high fantasy ball.

The setting begins to feel a little more solid around her. Before, she'd assumed she'd indulged in a little too much fairy wine, which was why she felt so light and floaty. Simply willing to revel in the dance, drawn blissfully to the most beautiful creature wanting to take her hand.

The Elven Princess towers over her, with hair like waves of spider silk tumbling down her back. Silver could quite easily rest her head back against her chest and enjoy the melody and the warmth of her embrace...

Without a soul,

My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold

Until you find it there and lead it back....home

Silver tenses up. There is no vocalist in the band and yet the lyrics ring clear in her head as if Amy Lee were right beside her.

Amy...

Those fingers glide through her hair; "Is something the matter, Lady Silver?"

Many things. She takes a deep breath, gathering her thoughts, what she can be certain of. The pieces of her life that have been brushed aside like defeated chess pieces.

Chess. That was one thing. Chess. Moon. Soft fur. Smell of wet dog.

Bit by bit, the memories began to ground her as she remembered who they belonged to. Anchors. Yes, that's what she needed. Something solid and heavy as a ten ton stone of iron to keep herself focused. Normally, trying such a thing in a dream would cause a normal person to wake. Good thing she was far from normal.

Smiling demurely, she pulled away from the arms of her partner.

"Forgive me, Your Highness. I just...require a visit to the buffet to grab some shrimp. Then I'll be right back." Silver improvises, keeping in character.

Daughter of the Great Witch of the Woods. Princess of the Enchanted Forest.

She might be watching. Her 'mother'.

The Elf maiden's eyes widened in hurt and disappointment, their violet irises glinting; "Oh? But the song has only just begun..."

She holds out her hand, those spindly fingers and that ivory skin... Silver gulped.

"Don't worry, hot stuff. I'll be back before it's finished." She gave her best curtsey before dashing off.

Tall, elegantly dressed figures in long tailcoats, cloaks, gowns and masks all peered at her as she walked briskly, holding up her skirts a little so as not to trip. She excused herself politely and ignored any attempts to grab her attention.

Chess. She takes a deep breath as she remembers her anchor. Chess. Moon. Furs.

Robin. Robin. Robin.

Home.

As she reaches the table, there is a seafood platter laid out with all her favorite morsels, from a prawn cocktail fountain to oysters, muscles and smoked salmon. Further along she spots the largest red velvet cake ever and a whole pile of...Fucking Echo bars, holy Hestia! She really had done her homework.

How long had it been since she'd eaten anything? Twenty years? Nearly thirty?

No...

She picks up a Cadbury Caramel Egg in her hand and peers at it. Only recently had she tasted one of these. Silver closed her eyes, one imaginary hand clinging to her anchor as the rest of her tried to remember the past couple of days with more clarity.

Do nots eat the food of fairyfolk, little'en. You bes bound to them forever.

But she had eaten the food. Well, not really. Because none of it had been real. Just a trick of the mind, no different than this. All just in her head. And yet...it felt so real. More real than anything she'd experienced in her dreams before. What was different here? Other than everything suddenly feeling much...deeper. Like she was on some deep, lower level of reality.

Despite the fact the party was taking place in a garden decorated with fae lights, not a cloud in the night sky, the moon shining...

The moon. She looked up. That's it. The moon was full.

She was asleep. Not just under the witch's magic but in a proper dream, though clearly with some of Not Mary's little bonuses, to keep her content.

Keep her trapped.

"Help me. Help me, Goddess." She whispered up to the silver white orb. "Lead me home."

A rustle of leaves came nearby.

Silver turned her head to see, outside the silk banners that cordoned off the edges of the party, were a row of hedges. Nearly hidden behind a tree, a section of branches and leaves had shriveled outward to form a small opening.

An escape.

Silver smiled, "Thank you!" She grinned up to the moon, before quickly taking her leave.

Don't look back. Don't be tempted to return. Don't think about the sexy Elven girl who could step on her with those amazing legs- No, really Silver, now is the worst time to be horny!

Holding onto her dress, nearly missing her simple leggings and short skirt, Silver ducked beneath the banner and into the gap in the hedge.

A dark tunnel awaited her. Small and cramped. She had to keep her head down, so her hair was not to be caught on any sharp twigs.

Another rustle.

Turning her head, she saw that the hedge had closed itself behind her. Exhaling, she told herself that was for the better. None of the creatures in that dream, probably placed there by Nary herself, could follow her. Once more, she touched her pentacle.

Even in this universe, she could have faith in her gods. They would be on her side. Just believe, Silver.

There was light up ahead. Near blindingly bright.

With every step, Silver shivered at the thought of Not Mary's face suddenly appearing at the end, in all it's burned, skeletal horror. Those glowing ember eyes peering at her. And then collapsing the tunnel as punishment and leaving Silver to suffocate in the dark.

She shook her head. Nope. Don't do that.

Anchor. Keep hold of the anchor.

In her mind, it becomes more like a lifeline thrown from a ship as she clings to it, letting herself be tugged safely back on board. Almost there. The light is getting brighter.

When Silver finally emerges, she straightens up, finding herself standing in what seems to be a wide, endless void of nothing. Heavy beige fog rises in the distance and the ground seems to be solid, swirling clouds. But there is nothing. No sound. No temperature. There is light but without any direct source.

She knew this place. It wasn't the first time she'd been here. But when?

Slowly, she stepped away from the tunnel. The sound of her boots treading upon the floor echoed as if she were walking upon a sound stage. Was she still dreaming? She could never imagine her dreams being as....boring as this.

Part of the space before her seems a tad more grey than the rest of the void. Silver approaches it and begins to notice how, the closer she gets, the fog seems to darken and swirl and, on even closer inspection, tints of color begin to mix in. Then shadows. Images, obscure and blurry, but present.

She keeps walking, hoping it will become even clearer, the closer she gets. And then her face collides with an invisible wall.

"AH! Fucking hell!" She swore, rubbing at her nose.

Silver reaches her hand forward and finds her hand being splayed against what feels like a sheet of glass. As she walks to the side, keeping her palm pressed upon it, there doesn't seem to be an end to it. Or any sort of latch or handle.

An eternal wall.

Was this it? The same one that Not Amy and Not Mary had spoken about?

She glanced around. No sign of the witch. But she said this was where she would come to. This was what she knew her Silver had been lost behind, and needed to be opened to return her. Where was she? The hairs on the back of Silver's neck raised. Not knowing where she was, was far more terrifying than facing the fiery wraith.

Her stomach twisted with the tiniest reaction of guilt.

It hadn't been....fun, deceiving the witch. It seemed like the smartest option. Not Mary had been determined to break her mind and will, either through mental manipulation or just sheer time. Why not make it easier? If Other Silver was like her then Not Mary would know her weaknesses, her insecurities. Why wouldn't Silver's be the same?

And so she'd played the part for as long as she had to. There was nothing she could do about her situation until she was asleep, having no way of astral projecting while wide awake. She only knew how via lucid dreaming first.

It hadn't been too difficult. Just over a day, first simply sitting beside the witch, letting the woman stroke her hair and tell Silver she was making the right choice and she would come to love living there. She let Not Mary cast the illusions into her eyes, changing her clothes (which did look awesome, she wouldn't deny) as well as herself and the forest. Everything except Not Robin, oddly enough, who remained perched upon his rock.

Silver had sat at Not Mary's feet before a roaring stone fireplace, in the middle of the woods, letting the woman brush her hair and tell her stories.

She'd indulged her 'mum' in a stroll by the lake and even found herself gasping at the mermaids who leapt from the waters. She'd sat by the pond and taken her first sip of liquid since before her death.

Cream soda had danced on her tongue and she'd fought the urge to cry.

'Mum' had then summoned a picnic blanket along with a basket of treats. They'd sat in a field of grazing deer and Silver had picked up a....Cadbury Caramel egg. Her favorite at Easter time. So much better than the Creme ones.

She knew not to get distracted. Knew not to get seduced by everything Nary was offering her.

But...fuck, that chocolate tasted even better than she remembered.

"Messy little pup." 'Mum' had tutted as Silver stuffed the last piece into her mouth and smeard some filling on her lip. Mary had reached forward to lovingly wipe it off.

Again, Silver had to fight back tears.

As the sun had begun to set, it had been too soon for her to feel tired, yet she'd been contented to lay her head on Nary's lap and let the other woman sing to her, stroking her hair.

Perhaps...Perhaps it would be fine to pretend this was forever. If just to sell the act.

But her heart had twisted as 'Mum' had whispered to her;

"I dids never imagine I'd open my hearts again after my death. Now there be two spots, for both my little girls." She said; "Oh, Silver. We will be ever so happy together, you'll see."

She'd been tempted to reveal the truth then and there. Despite everything Nary had done to terrify her earlier, she had no desire to break the wraith's heart. Clearly it had suffered enough already.

Then the dragons had appeared, flying in over the treetops and landing nearby, tucking in their wings. Silver had never seen anything so incredible. Even in the dreams where she'd seen her and Amy riding the beasts before...it was another to see them truly corporeal before her eyes.

And to stroke her hand against its warm, shining scales. To climb the ridges on its neck and mount its head. To fly....Oh gods, to fly...!

"This shall be your life now, my sweet girl. Forever and evers." Nary had crooned as she sat behind her, holding her close; "Yous shall has your month long visit to the world of dreams, and when you wake, you shall live those dreams for real in my land. And yous shall laugh each moment with your mummy and darling sister at your side. Yous will never feel alone or unloved again."

It had been so tempting to forget the plan. To just let what 'Mum' said become her new reality. How could anything she have back in her universe compare....?

And then she smelled the burning. And she remembered Mary.

Her Mary. Her mum.

If staying in that world meant ending up in a different AfterAfterlife, meant risking never being reunited with HER mum again, then all the dragons and magic and chocolate eggs could not make up for it.

Not that she said such a thing out loud to the witch. Silver had merely smiled, rested back in Not Mary's arms, and watched the world pass miles beneath the dragon's bronze head.

Her one chance of escape lay in her sleep. Lucid dreaming had been a skill she'd honed well in her many long sleeps since the first time she collapsed beneath the moon in those woods. In her Living days as a newbie witch, she'd been told that lucid dreaming and astral projecting were often linked. There were a few special cases, like Amy, who didn't need the former to do the latter. It was all about crossing through the veil of reality.

She needed to find this great border between universes on her own, without the witch knowing. And she had, with the help of the Goddess.

Now how the fuck to get through?

How had she crossed the first time? She doesn't...

Wait...

Silver could still hear the music coming from the party, travelling through the tunnel to follow her.

Now that I know what I'm without

You can't just leave me

Breathe into me and make me real...

Silver caressed the wall again and closed her eyes.

She'd been playing this song in her room. With Amy. Her Amy. They'd been singing (or screaming, Amy chose those parts) it while on her bed, using Silver's hairbrushes as pretend mics, as the song played on her CD player. She couldn't summon any fantasy when meeting Amy. There were no dragons to playing with. She could only pull what was in her memories, or Amy's from hers. But that was fine.

Her friend was with her. Her friend who she thought was gone, separated for who knows how long until it was Silver's time to be sucked off. Her friend who was happy to be used as a telephone between Silver and Mary. She knew how fucking lucky she was to have met Amy Bone.

When it had been time for their meeting to end for that night, for Amy to go visit her dad and Silver to slowly begin waking up, she'd taken a detour when leaving her room.

Normally, she returned back to wherever she was dreaming before. Her fantasy land that now felt like a cheap D&D meet-up compared to what Mary had shown her.

But something had called to her.

Mary?

No. Before that.

Laughter...Her own laughter...

She'd followed a path away from that which was safe and familiar to her. Far away from her own head. She searched for the source of the laugh. She'd walked and walked and found everything beginning to fade to grey around her, swallowed up by a rising mist that condensed into fog.

And then she'd walked into the wall. The first time.

But that laughter continued...coming from the other side.

Silver had peered into the glass, all the distorted images slowly clearing until she saw....

Black boots. Patterned leggings. A dirty pink skirt.

Her. It was her. Facing the other way.

There were leaves in her hair. That was the first obvious difference from this angle.

"Hello? Can you hear me?" She'd called.

No response at first. The laughter stopped.

Silver then knocked on the glass. Three times.

"Hehehehe!"

She froze, watching her other self slowly turn around. Then the wall became a mirror. A mirror of nightmares.

Her own face stared back at her. Bleeding. Blind.

Smiling. Smiling more than she knew would ever be comfortable.

"What the..."

"Hello! Is someone there, hehehe? Do you want to play?"

Her voice. It was always odd hearing ones own voice, but...That can't be how she sounded. High-pitched and childlike.

She should have turned back then. Turned back and returned to her dreams, ready to wake up. Wake up at home.

But she'd stood frozen to the spot, staring at herself, not knowing what to say. All sorts of questions danced on her tongue but she was afraid to know the answers.

Other Silver had swayed, dreamily, giggling as she came closer.

"Where are you, new friend?" Her other self asked, innocently. "Please don't hide. I don't have the lights on. It's not very fair, hehe."

Silver gulped.

"I'm here. Can you hear me?" She knocked once more on the glass, "I'm right here..."

"Oh! Hehehe! You're at the window! No-one ever comes to the window!"

And then the girl gasped, hands flying to her face, a drop of blood tricking onto her nail.

"I wonder! I wonder if..."

Silver frowned; "W-wonder what...?"

Did the girl have any idea she was facing a clone of herself? Would Silver's voice be too different for it to register?

Other Silver tittered and bounced on the spot.

"We can try playing a game, new friend! Put your hands on the window. Go on!"

What harm would there be? Silver had obeyed, indulging this twisted version of herself.

Other Silver then placed her hands against the glass in the same spot.

"Now...if we just do a little....push....Hehehe."

Silver felt a set of fingers interlock with hers.

She gasped. The glass. It was gone.

Then her double clasped her other hand. And laughed. And laughed. And laughed.

"Dance with me, new friend!"

And Silver had no time to think. No time to pull away. No time to run. In a heartbeat, she was pulled forward, while the other her slid her feet into her spot, spinning them around. And it was Silver who let go then, tumbling forward into the fog...On the other side of the wall.

Everything had been reduced to a blank after that. Next moment, she'd been wandering through the world another Silver's dreams, not even aware they were no longer her own. And then she'd heard the voice calling to her.

Come to me, darling girl. Come to Mummy.

She thought the witch had been to blame. The witch had accidentally taken the wrong child. But, in truth, Silver had been trapped before Not Mary had found her.

Back in the present, Silver just kept staring at the wall.

Her other self had done this. Had she been meaning to? Had she...wanted to escape her own world? Sure, it had its...horror elements, but Silver had assumed she'd been happy in her warped fantasies. Happy with her mother.

And yet there was no Other Silver here this time. No identical hands for hers to meet. No one.

Had she not come because she did not want to return? What if...No, that wouldn't happen...

Unless....

Bile threatened to rise up her throat. She needed her other self to come here. Now. How could she reach her if the wall was sealed again?

Not Amy's words revisited her brain. Her Silver had theorised...that dreams were merely windows to other worlds.

The Pagan pressed her forehead against the glass.

"Focus, Silver. Find her....Find her...."

-

There are usually flowers around her. All the colors of the rainbow and more. Heavy scents better than any essential oils, making her feel ever so relaxed and safe. Petals fall from the trees and they should be burying her, but they never do.

It's a bit different this time. For the first time ever, she didn't fall asleep in her special bed in the forest. Too dangerous, she was told. Maybe next month.

Usually she would have argued. She was supposed to sleep beneath the moon's gaze. How else could she be the moon girl, as her lovely new friend had titled her?

But he was ever so worried. And wanted her to stay with him in the big house. Just this once. Her room at least allowed the moonlight to shine in, or so he told her. Silver had trusted him because....Well, she's not sure why. But she's felt like she could trust him from the moment she woke up without Mummy at her side.

And so she's sleeping on a bed! How strange. In her dreams it grows to fill the room. If she were to stand up and jump on the mattress, it would make a sweet bouncy castle.

But Sweet Robin is beside her. Fast asleep.

She doesn't know what he looks like. Her hands feel fur like Mr. Floof and a similar bumpy, ancient, sad face. Is he like the Prince from Beauty and the Beast? Before he became that ugly, lame dude at the end.

Rolling on her side, she finds him curled around her. Her gentle beast. Her sweet new companion who Mummy apparently sent to protect her in his absense. Never before has any male been so kind to her. Not since her fake dad went to the next world. Giggling, Silver felt as though she could get lost in all his fluff. Like snuggling next to a pack of wolves, a bit like how she imagines when Mr. Floof lays with her.

Is Mummy happy in the stars, she wonders? Is Amy? Oh she hopes so. There better be dragons in the stars or Amy is gonna be pissed off...

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Silver raises her head. Is that noise coming from the window? She tries to visualise it, tries to manifest the room into her mind's eye, so much easier in dreams than reality.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

Faster now. Desperate.

"Someone there?" She asks with a tilt of the head.

Voices. Ever so muffled, as if the glass was soundproof.

"Speak up, hehehe! I can hear, honest, hehehe."

More vibrations. More knocking.

What was that word? 'Come outside'? 'Come to...?'

Silver shook her head.

"No. I can't come out and play. Not this time, hehehe." She says, as resolute as possible; "I promised to be a good girl."

Louder mumbling. Angry. Scared, maybe?

She took a deep breath; "I've got in enough trouble already! I'm not losing anyone else!"

If anyone is looking in through the window, her face will make it hard for them to tell how serious she is about this. She's not playing a game. For once, she's going to do the grown up thing.

Moving back onto the bed, closer to Sweet Robin, she curls back into his furry paws. Grumbling lightly, he instinctively wraps them around her.

The banging continues. The frame threatens to splinter.

"Leave us ALONE! Haha!"

With a wave of her hand, she caused the velvet curtains to close across the window.

The banging stopped. Peace and quiet.

Exhaling, relieved and a little proud of herself, Silver lay her head beneath Robin's mane. Mummy would be proud of her, she tells herself.

-

The image disperses. But Silver continues to hammer her fists against the wall.

"NO! NO, COME BACK! PLEASE, YOU HAVE TO COME BACK! WE HAVE TO SWAP, PLEASE!" She screams until her throat is raw.

After her hand begins to bruise, she slumps, creasing as she hits her head against the glass.

Fuck fuck FUCK!

She'd been so close. She'd managed to find her. Herself. Other Silver.

Asleep in...Had that been Amy's room? In Button House?

Had...Had that bundle of furs curled around her been Robin?

Her heart ached. Did Robin know that wasn't his Silver? Did any of them? Maybe they thought someone terrible had happened to her. Or maybe they...preferred that Silver...?

She gulped at the thought. Her and Robin had fought. She'd stubbornly refused to accept his apology. Perhaps...that Silver was easier to be around...

No. No, she couldn't give up.

Even if none of them missed her, even if Robin didn't want her back, Mary would. Mary was waiting for her to be sucked off and meet her again in the next layer. She had to go back. She'd come this far.

"Let me in! Let me in!" She demanded, punching the wall over and over. "LET ME THE FUCK BACK IN!"

"Be calm, sweet girl."

Silver froze at the voice.

"There be no point hurting thyself to no avail." The scent of burning flesh approached, followed by a billowing cloud of smoke.

Silver trembled as the Not Mary's burned wraith form manifested before her.

She waited for the fiery blows. The scalding. Both figurative and literal.

"You are a better actress than my darling girl. She oft' would pretend to be my willing daughter in those early years, but I could always detect the uncertainty." Not Mary barely sounded angry at all.

Just....sad. Tired.

That was somehow worse.

"Mary, I-."

The witch held up her bony hand. Silver silenced herself.

"I am numb to betrayal at this point, dear child." She said, hollow, "It did little to shock me to hear you bellowing at this wall instead of enjoying your fancy ball with the Elven folk."

"It was...lovely. You are lovely, really, I mean that." She said, honestly, "But I have to go home. I have to go back to my mum."

"And how dost thou plan to do that?"

"By....I dunno. We have to somehow get your Silver to come to the wall. That's how it happened, see? She didn't break down the wall! We were somehow able to pass through by...touching each other." She realised, a little amazed; "It must be some anomaly the wall couldn't account for. Two identical souls meeting...Touching. It's the only explanation. And it's the only way to reverse it."

She turned to look at the witch, flames burning muscle beneath rotten flesh and charred skin, smoke creating a fiersome black aura.

Silver was no longer afraid of it. She stepped forward.

"Call to her, Mary. She'll hear you. She'll come to her mum, I know she will!" Just as she did.

A Silver cannot ignore a call from Mum.

Not Mary looked at the wall, those cooked eyes tinged with yearning and pain. Silver dared to touch her hand.

"Please. You don't want me. You want her. Your Silver. End this. End it now." She begged.

The witch pulled her hand away and reached for the wall.

A pause. Silver waited with baited breath as Mary pressed her head to the glass.

A minute past. Then she pulled back.

"My darling girl has hidden herself too deep. She cannot hear her Mummy's call." She sighs, "Perhaps that beast has turned her against me."

"Robin? No. He wouldn't do that-."

"It matters not. Whoever and whatever stands between me and my darling girl....I shall reign fire upon them all. Until nought but ash remains."

Her voice chilled Silver to the bone without her even having to yell.

"No....Mary, please don't-."

"Silence." She turned her ember eyes on Silver; "T'is time that yous returned to the party I did lovin'ly arrange for thee to enjoy."

She shook her head; "No....Don't send me back there..."

Silver turned to run. Where, she had no idea, as there was literally nothing around her.

The wall. She reached for the wall.

A leathery burned hand wrapped itself firmly around her wrist.

"Oh, do stop your fussing, sweet girl! Anyone woulds think I's about to give thee a good thrashing, instead of spoiling thee with 'hearts desires." The witch clicked her tongue.

She didn't care. Didn't want it.

Home. All she wanted was to go home. If she spent too long trapped in a dream, distracted with illusions of everything she ever wanted...How long until she had no choice but to believe? And forget everything else?

Forget Mum. Forget her friends.

Robin...

Her heart pounding with terror, she stretched out her free hand.

"No...No, please, just let me...."

"THAT BE ENOUGH, SILVER!" The fingers tightened; "Mummy is not messin' around anymore! You wills learn to behave! Yous will be mine and that's Final!"

No! No!

Her index finger grazed against the glass. One little push. That's all Other Silver had said.

Push. Push.

She sent a single word from her heart, down her arm, into her finger and rippling through the glass, into the other world. One word. It was all she could do.

Silver screamed as a black tornado encircled her, billowing tremendously, then dragged her back into sugar-coated shadows.

-

The word sent shockwaves through the astral plane of the next world. All those sensitive to its vibrations found themselves jolting awake in fright. They couldn't understand the word, but the tiny flicker of the grotesque image sent the galaxy to shivers. It wasn't just the Livings or Unlivings who felt it.

Even those who had passed on woke with fright like they hadn't felt since before they ascended. Most forgot what they had seen as most dreams fade upon waking.

Beside a broken waterfall, a black labradoodle with a red muzzle startled awake and whimpered before releasing a mournful howl that no one could decipher.

In Mary and Annie's cottage, the taller woman let out a cry in her sleep and shivered as her wife soothed her. The flowers on their windowsill blackened and shriveled as if smothered by smoke.

But it was when the word reached its true target that it became as clear as could be. Sent to the closest thing to an actual goddess she had on her side, with powers in the land beyond. Casting a vivid picture into her mind, reflected in the glass of the great wall between words, revealing the truth. Revealing the girl with pink and black hair lost where she doesn't belong, trapped in the hands of a desperate, grieving, demonic mother.

One word to wake her. One word.

"AMES!"

[maccreadysbaby]

part i ; chapter i

❝ inescapable ❞

all chapters linked here

⚔︎

DALE WAS BURSTING WITH THE JOYS AND MERRIMENT OF LIFE. Children ran about the cobblestone streets, bellies full and energy abounding. The jingling of coins came and went from the shops that lined the roads, the entire city humming with a loud overlapping chatter -- people talking, laughing, living their lives to the fullest in a city rebuilt to splendor. Seven and a half decades had passed since their faithful city was rebuilt, and over triple that since the great dragon, Smaug, had left it in ruin. Now, the sun was shining on Dale once more, turning the stone streets gold, making the buildings that lifted high into the sky glow. It was peaceful, it was happy, it was plentiful. The evening sunlight streamed bright enough to grace the farthest buildings with its luminous golden rays -- even buildings like packed-to-the-gills pubs that sat right on the edge of the city, near to the docks, facing Lake-Town.

Beorn's Hollow was roaring with drunken laughter and shouts, as men from Dale, as well as travelers from the lands abroad, lifted the weight from their shoulders by filling themselves with stiff drink. A soft, jazzy tune wafted through the air, dancing and mixing with the smells of cigar smoke and fermented alcohol to make a toxic, tempting cocktail that, once swallowed up by it, few to none could escape. Not until the next morning, at least.

The interior of the building was almost completely coated in dark wood, tables and chairs smushed uncomfortably close together, but not as close together as the seemingly hundreds of bodies that were constantly moving around inside. The bar stood tall in the center, with never a seat open. The overbearing shouts of drunken merriment echoed out onto the blissful streets of Dale for the better half of every evening, drifting into the midnights and fading by morning. It was, to some, the happiest place in all the city.

But not tonight.

Tonight, an unfamiliar cold lay over the pub. And while most of the people inside were too busy drinking and socializing to notice, few did, and few left before the darkness of night fell over the building. Few turned around before they went through the door, with a sudden change of mind, of heart. Right ere midnight, pouring rain, accompanied by lightning, thunder, and a fierce wind rolled over Dale, plunging it into a cold, seldom silence.

Half after midnight, the large, wooden door to the pub swung open, hitting the wall behind with a loud bang and clatter of the decor hanging on it.

Standing in the doorway was a hooded figure, the light inside the pub too dim to illuminate their features. Lightning flashed and boomed outside, turning them into nothing more than a menacing black silhouette.

Little to none batted an eye besides a frazzled bartender who, without as much as an upward glance, shouted: "Oi! Careful with the door!" 

The hooded figure closed the door and scraped the mud off their boots, their head and gaze staying low as they moved. They, covered head to toe in a long, sopping wet brown cloak, seemed to disappear into the chaos of the pub, slinking through the crowd unnoticed until they were seated in one of the farthest, darkest tables. There they sat, alone, silent.

A waitress took a break from circling the pub like a wearied vulture to approach them, her dark eyes trailing about their appearance with a glimmer of suspicion. Her blonde hair was tied up in a messy updo on top of her head that sort of made her look like a strange flower. "And anything for you?"

The figure reached up with a gloved hand, and the waitress visibly stiffened as they tugged the hood of the cloak off their head.

"Oh, Adavera. It's you,"

Now visible for all the eyes in the room to see, the face beyond the dark cloak was not that of a suspicious man, or an exiled elf, but a young woman. Her eyes were like shards of crystal ice, cold and sharp, her brown hair the rich color of a beautiful woodland grove. Her face held the shine of youthfulness, her features petite yet striking, her posture and conduct holding years of experience far beyond her age. 

The waitress sighed lightly, the tenseness in her shoulders fading. "You want your usual?"

"If you'd be so kind. And two more, as well, for I will have visitors," Adavera replied, an small grin tugging upward at her lips, her fluttery falsetto a strange addition to the loud chorus of typical pub sounds. The coldness over the building seemed to warm at her smile, fade at her grin.

The waitress smiled, giving her a little bow, her blonde hair bouncing in its knot atop her head. "Very well."

Adavera turned her gaze down to the candle that sat, flame swaying at the center of the wooden table. Wax was dripping down the side and pooling against the tabletop, filling the crevices like water, like blood. Only a few of the waitress's footsteps met Adavera's ears before the woman turned around again. 

"Oh, and Adavera?"

Their gazes met.

"I'd be careful wearing dark cloaks over your head like that. Rumor has it there's a very dangerous man lurking around the cities. Some people might get the wrong idea from you, become suspicious," She explained softly. 

Adavera cocked a brow, leaning forward on her elbows. "What do you mean, dangerous?"

The waitress glanced around, to make sure none of the other inhabitants were listening, then took a few steps back over toward Adavera's seat. "I don't know for sure, but I've heard lots of talk about a mercenary. An assassin. A paid killer," She started, glancing around warily. "Every now and again someone will die — a clean slit to the throat, poison in a drink, an arrow to the chest, and no one can ever find the killer. He always leaves a symbol on his victims, a wolf, cut into their clothes, into a tree nearby, into the dirt. That's why they refer to him as The Ghost. Because no one's ever seen him before... or at least... no ones lived to tell it."

Adavera straightened uncomfortably in her seat. "Well, I'll be sure to keep my eyes open and my hood down from now on," She said, with a faintly uncomfortable smile. With an equally pained grin, the waitress took another small bow and disappeared back into the roaring crowd.

Adavera's eyes wandered over the room full of shouting people, her gaze lingering on a few of the daunting males in the room. A mercenary. A killer. A Ghost.

It was just as her eyes were drifting over the entry that the door flung open again, thudding against the wall behind it, just like it had when she entered.

"Oi! Watch the damn door!"

Again, the bartender couldn't trouble himself enough to look up, but Adavera paid enough attention for the both of them as a dark, cloaked figure entered from the storm, shutting the door and scraping their boots.

It was a tall person, hidden almost entirely from the rain by a dark cloak, bringing a wave of coldness with them. They rubbed their hands together to fight the winter chill as they moved like a cat through the crowd, going almost completely unnoticed. They moved further and further and further from the door until they were near to Adavera's table, and her eyes followed them closely.

All the way into the chair across from her.

Her hand slipped toward the hilt of a dagger hidden beneath her cloak, her gaze staying completely trained on the stranger's shadowed face. A silent moment passed before they, warily, reached up and tugged off their hood.

Beneath said hood was a pair of swampy green eyes, and some graying hair that Adavera knew all too well. The blank face of a man with nothing if not money and power -- aged by greed and grief and hardened to stone by his line of work.

"Sir Godwyn," She breathed, ducking her head slightly as a form of compliancy. Respect. Submission, toward her employer.

He looked around the pub warily, nose crinkling as though he was too high-class for the place, unclipping his brown cloak and letting it gather by his sides. Adavera watched his cold gaze as it moved, a physical drop in temperature following his pupils around the room.

"Are we waiting for the third member of our party?" She questioned lowly, and he only responded with a curt nod.

With that, the pair fell silent again, Adavera peering around the pub curiously. She watched men with weapons on their backs sit at the bar -- those were most likely wary travelers settling in Dale for the night. The men who came in with a weapon on their back tended to scan the room as though a wolf was lurking somewhere within.

Someone slid into the chair to the left of Adavera.

She hadn't heard or seen him come in.

Glancing over quickly, slightly startled, she took in the third cloaked figure. He was taller than her and Godwyn each by at least a foot, easy. Slowly, he let down the hood of his wet cloak.

Beneath it was an uncommon sight in cities of men like Dale -- the ageless and perfected face of an elf. His features were symmetrical and perfectly placed, as an elf's often were, his grayish-brown eyes, even in the pub, dancing with something that looked oddly like starlight. His hair, raven-dark and silky, cascaded down into his cloak, straight as a pin, tied back out of his face by a myriad of intricate braids and silver clasps.

His eyes full of starlight found hold on Adavera's, and he gave her a quick nod of greeting, which she returned readily.

"Nice of you to show, Cepheus. If not on your own time," Godwyn said lowly, as if Cepheus hadn't arrived mere minutes after himself, scratching at the gray scruff that was growing unevenly on his chin. His eyes kept darting around, to avoid meeting their gazes. "Tell me-"

The three of them glanced up at the waitress when she returned with three plates of dinner food and a trio of ales. Godwyn nodded thanks, and Adavera smiled faintly as the woman passed them the dishes. Her eyes seemed trained on Cepheus -- rightfully so, for no one ever saw an elf in Dale. She put an ale in front of each of them and, with a little bow and one last look at the resident pointy-ear, made a break for it.

Adavera looked down at her hefty plate of a pork chop, corn, and potatoes, then up at the others. Godwyn was staring at his food, blankly, and Cepheus already had his half-pint of ale in his hand, cringing down at the liquid like the waitress had poisoned it. Adavera would've made a joke about their fine elvish wine, had their boss not been sitting right across the table.

Godwyn grabbed his utensils and began to cut at his meat, nodding to himself as he caught the perfectly cooked innards of the pork chop. "Tell me, how was your trip to Erebor?"

Adavera picked up her fork and swirled the potatoes around, leaving small trails in it like a vegetable garden on a hill. She glanced over at Cepheus, and his eyes were already on her, fork in hand, and they stared, deciding who was to speak.

Adavera lost the staring contest to the two big stars the elf had on his face. "It went smoothly," She started near-inaudibly, clearing her throat, looking down at her plate and swirling her fork some more. "No hiccups, no witnesses, not a single suspicion thrown my way. All believe I am perfectly innocent."

"Watcher?" Godwyn's eyes flicked to Cepheus for assurance, and the elf nodded, once. 

"Yes, sir. The dwarves even insisted she take her leave afterwards so as to protect her from whatever lurks within, going as far as telling her to send a missive back when she arrived at Dale to convince them of her safety. They have long since closed their gates."

Godwyn put a bite of meat in his mouth, his green eyes lingering on the elf. "Speak to me pleasantries all you like, you know I will not believe the job is done until I receive a token."

With a quick shared glance between Adavera and Cepheus, the former reached into a bag she was concealing beneath her cloak, retracting her hand with a clipping of hair that had been cut by a knife from someone's head, ruddy and red, with a metal clasp still wrapped around it. She handed it across the table to her employer, who took it readily.

She stayed silent as he examined it, putting a small bite of potatoes in her mouth. She wasn't very hungry anymore.

"And did you leave your token?"

Adavera nodded subtly. "Used one of their forging furnaces to brand it into the dead dwarf's leather tunic. Everyone saw it."

After a moment of quiet contemplation, he nodded. "News of the dreaded dwarf's death has spread to Dale and Laketown. No one suspects a thing. Not from us, anyway," He spoke lowly. He reached into perhaps his own hidden bag and withdrew a large bundle of cloth from it. "Your payment, Ghost."  He whispered the last word with a hint of mirth on his lips.

He handed the large, tied up cloth across the table to Adavera, who readily ignored the nickname and took it instead. She pulled back one edge and peeked inside.

"The king's jewels," She breathed, watching the riches twinkle in the candlelight. "Was I hired by a member of the royal family of Dale?"

Godwyn's eyes trailed down to the cloth. "I will not reveal who hired you. You know this."

Adavera said nothing, and he pulled another bundle from his cloak. "And for the Watcher."

He handed Cepheus the bundle, which looked a little smaller than Adavera's, and the elf nodded once in thanks.

"I have another job for you," Godwyn said, leaning forward. He pulled a paper from inside of his cloak and slid it across the table, between Adavera and Cepheus so they could both see. It held a drawing of a man. He was not an ugly man, mind you -- he was rather well-groomed, with shoulder length hair and a warrior's stoic expression. At the top of the slip was written his name, at the bottom, a bounty of much larger a number than Adavera had expected. "This is Boromir, firstborn son of Denethor the II, heir to the seat of Gondor. And he has a very, very hefty price on his head."

Adavera examined the photograph, taking in his features and the details of his appearance, as did Cepheus. She had been to Gondor twice before, to Minas Tirith, on business. She remembered hearing his name floating around the streets. He was an esteemed warrior. 

"Who is it, that wishes the heir of Gondor to perish?" She spoke softly.

"I must not reveal that to you," Godwyn started, glaring coldly at her. "His whereabouts change frequently, though last I heard he was riding north, from Minas Tirith to Rivendell, with only his steed for company."

Adavera nodded absentmindedly, staring down at the little picture, engraving his appearance into her mind. 

"Perhaps the Ghost can intercept him before his lone journey ends," The man started quietly, and she looked up, their eyes meeting. "If he has arrived at Rivendell ere yourself, I expect no shortness of professionalism as you finish your job in the city. Not even from you, Watcher."

Godwyn gave Cepheus one of his signature glares. "I do realize your kin are within that city, and you must make nothing of it. Remember that it is your job not to be seen."

Cepheus nodded once again, but some of the starlight seemed to be dimming in his brownish irises.

Adavera tapped her fingertips against the tabletop. "Have you any idea how long he has been on the road? It may aid us in deciding if we should try to intercept him or continue hastily to Rivendell."

Godwyn shrugged, shoving a large bite of food in his mouth. "I received word right ere noon from a scout who saw him leaving Minas Tirith. Taking into consideration the time it would take for me to receive the message here in Dale, I suspect he has about a remaining two months journey ahead of him if he keeps at a steady pace. You should restock and leave ere sunrise, for if you ride through the nights, through Mirkwood and over the Misty Mountains, you may be able to catch him yet. Keep your tokens close, for I have many scouts on your path."

Adavera's hand trailed to the inside neckline of her cloak, which held a small wolf, embroidered in white — the mark of Godwyn's employees. The same one Cepheus had on the inside of his cloak, and their boss, as well. The same one Adavera left on every single target she killed. She met Godwyn's cold gaze again, but instead of speaking, she nodded, glancing down at the picture of the valiant warrior. Her eyes then trailed up to Cepheus, who looked up at her, and for a moment, they stared.

Cutting the heir of Gondor off before he could arrive at Rivendell. It wasn't the hardest job they'd ever had, but it wouldn't be the easiest. The slightest incorrect calculation could lead their timing astray and throw the whole thing off balance. Adavera wasn't sure who or why someone wanted Boromir, son of Gondor, dead, but she couldn't help the pang of pity that struck through her quickly, like lightning. Like it always did when she got a new job, when she examined various drawings of perfectly happy souls with unfathomable prices below their heads.

But, as always, she was painfully good at putting up a facade.

With an exhale, she pulled her hood up and stood, leaving her full plate of food and cup of drink on the table. She grabbed the slip of paper and tucked it away her bag. 

"Then I must get preparing. I give you my word-" She started, grabbing some money from her pouch and leaving it on the table for their food and drink. She looked up at her boss, then at Cepheus, a small grin flashing across her features. "-The son of Gondor shall die to no blade if it is not my own."

She was as silent leaving the pub as she was coming in.

⚔︎

tag list!

@inkedmoth

[iamprchung]

Dancing in the Moonlight 5/? - Monster Boy

Synopsis:

Luxury promised, luxury denied. Mulder and Scully's posh stay at Silver Stone Ridge could be abruptly cut short thanks to an anonymous complaint to bureau just hours after their arrival. Undeterred, they delve into the lives of the deceased at the resort's elegant restaurant. Here, tales about the victims paint a confusing picture, riddled with more questions than answers. A glimmer of hope emerges with an odd waitress who offers to reveal the last steps of a victim, hinting at a darker truth behind his demise.

Notes:

Hey, if you’re reading this and haven’t read any of the other Complimentary Mints stories in this series, there’s some subtle allusions here that you’ll figure out, but please go read the other stories in this series.

Dancing in the Moonlight 5/? – Monster Boy

By PR Chung

The glass doors of the Silver Stone Ridge whooshed open with a sigh of perfectly temperate conditioned air, scented with a citrusy burst wrapped in a warm whisper of wood and musk, and revealing a scene that hit Scully like a blast of icy champagne. The spacious lobby rose into a two-story atrium, great timbers framing the arch and the mezzanine, lit by natural light from a glass ceiling, and accented by small delicate string lights.

Before an imposing stone fireplace, its hearth decorated with earthen pots, plush leather sofas and love seats were arranged around low tables set with tiffany style lamps. The floor was scattered with woven geometric pattern southwestern rugs.

The clientele lounging in the plush seating epitomized the kind of people who likely bought those cars that lined the circular drive. People, all dressed to the nines, sipped cocktails that looked like they cost more than Scully’s monthly grocery bill. The air itself in this place vibrated with a low hum of wealth and privilege that made Scully’s economical shoes feel two sizes too small.

There was no way this stay was going to get expensed.

“See Scully,” Mulder told her in a low tone, “what did I tell you, rubbing elbows with the rich and famous.”

“Mulder,” she scolded, matching his low voice, “we’ll never get this expensed. I’ll be surprised if they even have our reservations in the system.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he dismissed her avid concern as they moved among the ambiguously fortunate, making their way to the front desk. “We’re here to investigate. We check in— without issue, I guarantee— and we’ll continue investigating at the restaurant here where Raven and Steinman worked.” He looked at her. “Trust me.”

“You of all people, to say that.”

They shuffled among one of three short and disorganized lines at the front desk. Disgruntled murmurs and impatient long sighs filled the air despite the lines moving swiftly. Behind the marbled length of the front desk, three clerks performed at optimum efficiency and graciousness, their smiles never wavering as they greeted and assisted each anxious guest.

Soon enough, Mulder and Scully approached the desk, greeted by a tall woman with shorn dark hair and a smooth pale complexion. The silver name tag on her maroon blazer read ‘Leslie.’

“Welcome to the Silver Stone,” she greeted the agents, her smile inviting and her tone lilting and pleasant. “I am pleased to assist you with check-in, your names please.”

“Fox Mulder and Dana Scully,” Mulder announced, glancing at Scully who shook her head. He squinted at her daring anticipation that there would be no reservation.

“Ah, yes, two rooms, I have them right here,” Leslie announced. “May I see your identifications?”

Both agents presented their IDs and Leslie lingered over Mulder’s for a moment. “Oh yes,” she said, “I’ve heard about you, Mr. Mulder.”

He laughed, “Really, how so?”

The clerk smiled. “Just around.” Before Mulder could say any more, she said, “Two moments and I’ll have your digital keys ready.”

“Your reputation precedes you, Mulder.” Scully murmured as she glanced around the lobby.

“Which one though?” He wondered.

“I thought this place would be buzzing with celebrities.” Scully remarked, gloomily.

“Isn’t that Richard Gear over there?” he asked, faintly pointing.

“Where?” Scully asked, following the direction he’d gestured.

“By the Grimm’s story fireplace, plaid shirt.”

She looked for a moment, frowning as she eyed a red headed man in a plaid shirt. “That’s not Richard Gear.”

Mulder glanced in the man’s direction, squinting. “Are you sure?”

“If you’re expecting to see a famous face or two, you’ll need to attend the music festival or go to the restaurants in town,” Leslie offered having overheard their exchange. “The famous either own their homes in the area or rent their private lodging.”

“How disappointing,” Mulder feigned, and glanced at Scully. “And you had your heart set on meeting Leo DiCaprio.”

“He’s at the Regis,” the clerk nonchalantly said, and smiled, adding, “On the other side of the valley.”

“Location. Location. Location.” Mulder remarked, deadpan.

“Yes, indeed,” Leslie held out two plastic cards, “Your keys, rooms 418 and 417. Your luggage is already on its way. “Your balcony should give you an excellent view… of the full moon this weekend, Mr. Mulder.”

Mulder tilted his head, his mouth pulling up in uncertainty.

“Enjoy your stay.” Leslie finalized their exchange, motioning the next guest forward and greeting them.

“One more thing,” Mulder asked, blocking the people behind him. “Could you tell me were the restaurant is?

Leslie smiled again, pleased to help. “Oh, yes, the Spectrum Lunate, where twilight meets the moonlight, just to your right and just up the stairs.”

Walking away, Mulder triumphantly held up the key cards into Scully’s view, “And just like that,” he said and handed her one of the key cards, “no fuss, no worries, just two-story sprawling spas and private balcony patios…”

Scully wasn’t falling for the siren call of luxury, “Let’s go to the rooms. I just want a change of clothes before tramping through God knows what kind of terrain.”

“Scully, that’s totally unlike you, you’re like a mountain goat in heels,” Mulder declared, “you’ve chased down criminals both human and supernatural over uneven ground with the grace of a gazelle in your size… uh” he glanced down at her feet.

“Seven,” she afforded.

“In your size seven…” he looked again, skeptical of the size she professed, then finished, “pumps.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Mulder. Just because I can run and climb in heels doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”

---------------------------- xXx-------------------------------

Scully swung open the door, the plush carpet swallowing the sound of her heels. Like walking on pillows on top of clouds, she glided across the vast space, awe and concern battling within her.

Sunlight, filtered through a haze of early autumn, streamed across the beige walls, illuminating a scene ripped straight from a glossy travel magazine. A king-sized bed, as white as a fresh lab coat, beckoned with its plush green pillows, a stark contrast to the sleek grey headboard that seemed to whisper, "designer."

Neutral tones, Scully's usual companions in the field, were relegated to mere background players here, overshadowed by the rich, polished wood side tables that gleamed like they held classified government secrets. A hint of a secret pleasure flickered in her eyes, a fleeting indulgence before the weight of reality settled back in.

Mesmerized, Scully drifted toward the sliding glass doors. With a slow, deliberate movement, she opened the door, stepping out onto a sprawling private patio. And there it was. Perfection.

The wood decked patio stretched out toward the horizon, offering a front-row seat to a nature documentary come to life. Pristine mountains, their peaks splashed with crimson and gold like a spilled bottle of autumn sangria, rose majestically in the distance. Below, a meticulously maintained golf course unfolded like a putting green the size of Texas, dotted with sand traps that resembled miniature Death Stars and shimmering ponds that sparkled like scattered diamonds. Beyond the course, a dense forest stretched out, its canopy a riot of autumnal colors, promising cool shade and the whisper of unseen wildlife.

A wry smile tugged at Scully's lips, tinged with a touch of sadness. This, she thought, was definitely not budget travel. The expense report would never be approved, the fact that she was standing here in this majestic place was a mistake, an awful taunting mistake. But for now… she would soak it all in, this taste of the impossible, a stolen moment of luxury before the weight of responsibility came crashing down. She closed her eyes, breathing in the crisp mountain air, savoring the stolen moment before the inevitable knock on the door.

Her cell trilled in her coat pocket. She looked at it and smiled seeing it the caller ID: AD Walter Skinner.

This would be a perfect get away, she daydreamed for an instant before answering.

“Good morning,” she answered, feeling immensely content. “How—"

“What is going on out there? I just received a call from the Deputy Director…”

Scully took a step back at the sound of his voice. He was in no mood for pleasantries. And any notion of romance just took a running jump off the balcony and was headed for the 18th hole of the golf course.

“Is he there? I haven’t been able to reach his cell phone.”

“The service is unreliable here…”

“Scully, I authorized this… excursion of Mulder’s, not anticipating complaints about how the investigation is being conducted,” Skinner hissed over the phone, emphasizing further, “It’s seriousness. The professionalism of one of the bureau’s agents— One of the agents under my supervision.”

“Sir,” Scully said, realizing the level of his ire, the need for professionalism, “we are conducting a legitimate investigation, following all protocols and…”

“Regardless, Scully,” he interrupted, “according to the Pitkin Colorado County sheriff's office, monster boy has turned this into a werewolf hunt— that makes the bureau look like the paranormal keystone cops.”

“There are… aspects of the case that have… raised unusual questions, which could place people at unease…”  Scully explained as she moved inside, blind to the room’s luxuriousness, headed straight for the adjoining hotel room doors, opening hers and knocking on Mulder’s side.

“What was that?” Skinner asked abruptly.

“Housekeeping.”

“Tell them to go away.”

“Just a moment,” she muted the call and banged furiously on the door her room shared with Mulders. “Open up, Monster Boy!”

The tumblers in the lock clacked and turned rapidly before the door flew open from the other side. Wide eyed, Mulder looked back at her, “What is it?”

She tilted her head and placed a finger to her lips, then pointed at her cellular phone. She pressed the mute button. “I’m back, sir.”

“Listen, I know you’re following procedure, but someone out there isn’t keen about the unusual aspects to this case as you phrased it, Scully. Tell him to keep his theories to himself and stick to the facts— that town is rife with the rich and powerful that don’t hesitate at filing frivolous lawsuits.”

Mulder at Scully, mouthing, “Skinner?”

Scully jutted her head at him aggravated, mouthing back at him, “Duh!”

“I will inform and advise agent Mulder.”

“Scully, I’m sorry, but this has probably brought too much attention to the expenses involved.” Skinner’s voice softened some. “I won’t be able to prevent you and Mulder from having to find other accommodations.”

“I understand, sir.” With that, Scully ended the call and looked at Mulder. “Someone has complained to the bureau about a… specific theory and our level of seriousness about this case. And…” she hesitated, glancing back at her room, “we need to find other accommodations.”

“Complained? Who complained?” Mulder asked, his surprise undeniable.

“He didn’t say.” She answered, following him. “I don’t think he knew.”

Mulder began to gather up his things, shoving them into his suitcase willy-nilly. “It had to be the sheriff. I don’t think Kessler or Goodman would call the bureau.” He speculated.

“Regardless, we have to— you need to use some restraint, Mulder.”  

“Restraint isn’t going to solve this case.” He turned to her, “someone doesn’t want us here, investigating these deaths. Complaining to the bureau within hours of us arriving, your exam, it’s an attempt to get rid of us, to distract attention from something else going on in this town.”

“Mulder, you have to accept that someone, regardless of who, is questioning our methods,” Scully declared. “Skinner wants us to proceed more cautiously.”

Mulder looked at her, as if something just occurred to him. “You.. you still call him sir?”

Scully reacted. “Y-yes!” She replied offended. “And did you not just hear anything I said?”

“Yes, but it’s just so… weird.”

“What’s weird about it?” she demanded. “He’s our superior…”

His voice trailed as he disappeared into the vastness of the bathroom to gather things, “weird…”

---------------------------- xXx-------------------------------

“Mulder, that bathroom alone could have fit a girls’ volleyball team inside of it,” Scully sulked as they headed toward the resort restaurant, her bags repacked and waiting back the room to be picked up.

“The Sundance Motor Lodge sounds… just as nice,” Mulder offered. “The lady on the phone said they’ve got a Bob Evan’s right across the road, and a view of the Girls and Boys Club ball field…”

“Shut up, Mulder.”

The Spectrum Lunate was a hive of activity concentrated within the bar and kitchen. Staff were splitting their energy between current customers and hurriedly prepping for the surge of guests as the resort filled with festivalgoers.

In oddly sharp contrast to the staff's activity, the rich, swaying chords of 'Moonlight Serenade' played over the sound system. The easy, nostalgic tune fit the ambiance of the dark wood paneled restaurant, where linen tablecloths and napkins were uncreased, and every table was elegantly set. A simple centerpiece of a candle and flowers provided the finishing touch.

Beyond the main dining room, just beyond the French pane windows, lay a patio terrace. It wrapped out of view on either side, overlooking aspens and pines that stretched into the distance toward the foothills and mountains.

“Two for lunch,” a young blonde woman asked as she approached them, she was smiling, but clearly her day was already wearing on her professional cheerfulness.

“Can we sit at the bar?” Scully questioned.

“Of course, please,” the woman gestured toward the seats, “take your choice.”

“I’m Brittany,” she introduced herself, going behind the bar as they seated themselves. She placed leatherette bound menus on the bar before them, “drinks for you?”

“Water is fine,” Mulder said, and Scully nodded in agreement. “Brittany, I’m agent Fox Mulder and this is my partner Dana Scully. We’re investigating the recent deaths of Jeffrey Raven, and Alice Steinman.”

Brittany blinked, her smile faltering slightly, as she looked between Mulder and Scully. “Agents?”

“Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Scully held her ID into view.

“Okay,” Brittany said taking a breath, distracted by a male employee coming into the bar area with a tub of service sets, “that’s… that’s, uh, kind of heavy. I didn’t know the FBI investigated wild animal attacks.”

“Did you know either Jeffery Raven or Alice Steinman?” Mulder asked.

Brittany nodded as she busied herself getting glasses for their water. “Yeah, I worked with both of them here and there, you know, we all have different shifts.” The man behind the bar hesitated, listening to the conversation a moment before he stowed the tub under the bar and went back into the kitchen area. Brittany continued as she filled glasses with ice, “Mostly I worked with Alice here in the bar. Jeffrey was more back of the house. He took care of the kitchen, you know, he was hospitality manager.”

The man appeared again at the door to the kitchen, behind him several other employees stood peering out curiously.

“Everything okay here, Brittany?” he asked, giving Mulder and Scully a circumspect once over.

“Yeah, Marty, come on over, these are agents from the FBI, they’re investigating Jeff and Alice’s deaths.”

“FBI?” He asked coming over to stand with Brittany, “why would you be investigating animal attacks?”

“We are here due to the department of fish and game expressing concerns that these deaths could be due to negligence on the part of an animal owner.” Scully explained as tactfully as possible.

“We just want to talk with anyone who may have been here the night Jeffery Raven was killed,” Mulder explained, seeing more employees peeking out of the kitchen.

Scully added, “Trace his actions and route, to determine if his death was an accident or not.”

“You think his death wasn’t an animal attack?” Brittany asked, sounding and looking disturbed by the suggestion. She stood holding two glasses of ice, as if frozen. “If it wasn’t, then what killed him?”

“He was just leaving work like any other night,” Marty said and took the glasses from Brittany. He gave her a motion, gesturing for her to go back to the kitchen. He turned to Mulder and Scully, sitting their glasses on the bar. “Jeff took that short cut, and something got him.” He sat a carafe of water on the bar, “that’s all any of us know.”

“Had he been having problems with anyone here or outside of work,” Mulder asked, “could anyone wanted to have hurt him for any reason?”

“Here? No, Jeff got along with everyone, we loved the guy,” Marty declared matter-of-factly. “Outside of work,” he shook his head. “No telling, he never said anything, but people can be like that, not over sharing about their personal business.”

“What about Alice Steinman,” Scully questioned, “Did you work with her, know anything about her life outside of work.”

Marty chuckled, glancing back toward the kitchen doors where the employees hovering there recoiled, disappearing back into the kitchen. “Wow, Alice, yeah, she was a sweetheart, and liked to party. A lot of us… well, we were pretty shocked to hear how she died, but honestly, it wasn’t a surprise considering how independent she was. I mean how she’d just go walking anywhere, any time of night or day if she wanted.”

“So, she’d been out the night of her death,” Mulder inferred, “do you or anyone else know where or who she may have been with?”

“If she wasn’t here when she was off work, she was at a camp site where a lot of folks just set up in the woods, you know, having a good time. But that night though,” Marty shook his head, “word was she’d gone to hang with an ex that’s trying to dry out at Sonder Hill.”

“Sonder Hill, what’s that?” Scully asked.

“The rehab,” Marty scoffed and motioned toward the windows and the distance. “If you can call it that. Most people just go there to get away and hide.”

“Hide?” Mulder repeated, curious. “From what?”

“From life, their responsibilities, bills, anything they can’t handle.”

The sound of loud clattering sounded from the kitchen, followed by someone shouting Marty’s name. “Sounds like I’m needed.” He told them and turned to go to the kitchen, “good luck with this investigation. Catch that damn mountain lion, FBI.”

“Can someone show us how Jeffery Raven would have left the building…” Mulder called after the man, trailing off as he disappeared through the kitchen doors.

Mulder turned to Scully. “Is it possible to be less informed than before we came in here?”

Scully began to speak when she was interrupted by a slight woman coming out of the kitchen. “Hey, hi,” she greeted them, wiping at her black uniform vest as if drying her hands. “I can show you how Jeffrey left.”

“Thank you, that would be great,” Scully offered the woman a grateful smile.

She struck her hand out over the bar to them stiffly, “I’m Andie,” she introduced herself, adding, “they call me Andie Pandy,” she gestured toward the kitchen. “But that’s not my name. It’s Andie, like the actress, you know, um, in Groundhog Day.”

“Hi, Andie,” Scully said, shaking her hand that was still slightly damp. “I’m agent Dana Scully, and this is my partner, Fox Mulder.”

Andie grinned, shaking Mulder’s hand. “Oh, Fox, that’s pretty awesome, how’d you get a great name like that?”

“Just lucky I guess.”

“I like it.” Andie grinned bashfully, emphasizing her already high cheek bones and strong jawline.

He smiled. “Thanks.”

---------------------------- xXx-------------------------------

Continued in part 6

[wilsonthemoose]

Thursday's Child

(Stanford Era) ~1400 words, Sam/Jess. (Link to Ao3)

He's almost normal, for a while.

Okay so maybe he's never been quite normal.

Maybe he plays card games and laughs in the middle of the circle and maybe he holds himself still when his elbow rubs against the person next to him, huddled as they are in the back benches of the class in the introductory lecture when the professor hasn't shown up yet. Maybe he wins and shrugs and feels out of place. Maybe he thinks it takes time and he'll belong here one of these days.

Okay so maybe he knows he's full of shit.

(Funny isn't it when life knocks the rose-tinted glasses off your face?)

_

Unreasonable, how much you miss something you swore you hated.

The rumble of the car, the legos knocking around in the vents. Back country roads and a sheaf of maps sprawled on the tables.

His father.

Diners, the same in every town and slightly different each time they walked through a door. How it didn't matter all that much that no one liked him at that one school in Des Moines or that he wrote too much of himself into the essay in fourth grade. How every new town was a place to exist for a few weeks before leaving and hitting the road with news channels distorted on their radio or AC/DC loud in the speakers.

Dean's music.

He gets a walkman and a couple of cassettes and can't listen to a full song, stops trying.

_

She wears her hair loose, it curls around her neck and stands out golden against his canvas jackets when he forgets to brush the stray strands off his clothes.

He sells his bicycle to buy her a lamp the first time she invites him to a birthday. She cries, two years later, when it breaks.

It scares him sometimes, how she cries out in pain when she cuts herself chopping spring onions for soup and how tears spring to her eyes when she needs stitches for a small cut on the back of her arm.

He never knows what to say, scared of insensitivity and his brother's brand of brusque comfort. Sometimes she looks at him like she's wondering if he even cares at all and he lifts his chin like he's sure of himself and says "It'll be okay."

He never knows why she sticks around.

When she tells him he'll crash and burn without her, he nods affirmation and knocks on wood. It makes her laugh because she doesn't know.

It scares him, all the time, how much he's got that he could lose. How she doesn't know how to protect herself from all the things out there in the wide world. He carves a rune into a pendant and conceals it behind a mood-stone for her and he never has to ask her to wear it.

"Why do you keep so much salt?" she asks, balancing on her tippy-toes on a stool, leaning into the cupboard over the counter, tossing a can of salt in the air like a cocktail shaker. He tells her a half-truth about how, as a kid, he'd make ice-cream out of milk, cereal, and marshmallow with ice from the ice machine. "Salt melts the ice," he says, "It chills faster."

"Here," he says and grabs the salt out of the air before she catches it again. He mixes a bowl of coffee flavoured ice-cream, worse than he remembered and better than he hoped.

Does it say something about them? That he lies all the time about his life and she lets him. That she says she'll never be her mother and he sets a framed photograph of his own parents on a corner table in their apartment as if he'd like to be his father.

_

He's a freak, a loner with a scholarship, a great GPA, and a shitty wardrobe but he's sincere and maybe that counts for something because there are people who let him hang around.

Brady who copies off his notes and complains about the way Sam writes ts and hs. Rebecca who changed her major twice and misses her family almost as much as he does.

He never stops feeling like if he stood up to throw his cup away and never came back, no one would notice.

Too much sun in California. Too many people who know him by name. He still trips over it sometimes.

He makes spare change making fake IDs, makes up stories for what he's doing over Christmas, where he's going in the summer, picks up jobs on campus and off; shoots pool, sometimes, just for the nostalgia. He doesn't need to hustle to win anyway.

When she introduces them, her father calls him son.

It's probably a catch-all term, used indiscriminately for delivery boys and Walmart tellers. He hates it anyway.

_

It's a good life. She makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the world and manages to burn the milk every morning without fail (coffee starts tasting off to him if the milk isn't burnt).

She always says it twice, "I love you, I love you," like he might not have paid attention to her the first time.

Maybe it starts to feel a little bit like normal, switchblade tucked into the seams of his bag and an iron poker leaning against the wall behind the fridge. Mementos on the tables and pictures on the wall, her neat little notes "Knock 'em dead xoxo" tucked into his notebooks like placeholders and in his wallet like he needs to save them. Like she wouldn't call him a dork and write him another hundred if he asked. Like she wouldn't be smiling thinking she was the luckiest girl in the world.

_

He's homesick, incurably and suffocatingly homesick. There is no home. A door thumping closed behind him on a damp-cushioned latch and a warning not to come back.

Morbidly sometimes, he reads obituaries. It's a relief, an obsession, and an itch.

Sometimes he wants to go back.

_

He studies a little too much and works a little too hard. She spends a bit too much of her parent's money, and when she's drunk, talks about her little sister almost drowning in the lake the summer they were learning to swim.

He thinks about fires and drowning and assignments and stops sleeping quite so well. She's pinned to the ceiling in his dreams every night.

He drinks a little too much and hustles a game too many and she types his essay while he flexes his bruised knuckles and holds an ice pack against his jaw. He's more amused than anything else, that she makes such a big deal of it, even when the liquor's worn off, he's a little bit off. Not entirely himself, whoever he's supposed to be.

A freak and a loner, a little too good at hustling and a little too quick on his feet. Far too good at playing a part, fitting into a decent role. Sam Winchester, son of an ever-wandering father, with an ascent coloured with Louisiana and South Dakota and all the other places he's been, a map of more near-escapes than he has a right to.

Sam Winchester, misfit wherever he goes. On the fringes, the sidelines, dead center and still out of place.

She teaches him how to tie his tie and sits with him when he's trying not to cry.

_

He dreams of his father as a young man, bloodsoaked and lifeless, his mother crying, hair curly like Jess but fierce too, like Dean.

He wonders why he cares so damn much. The closest he's ever got to her is a few pictures and a few stories. A single dream.

When Dean tells him their father's on a hunting trip and hasn't been home in a few days, he wonders if he should put more stock in his dreams.

Sunday evening with smoke in his throat, he knows he picked the wrong dream.

(Lightning too has been known to strike the same place twice.)

They call it an electrical fault.

_

Of whatever little survived the fire, he doesn't keep anything.

In another world, they might've learnt to be happy.

He'd go to law school, she'd be a doctor. He'd practice opening statements in front of the mirror, she'd learn anatomy tracing her fingers along his spine. He'd try to make her laugh, she'd try to make him forget. They'd be safe.

He just missed his brother. Wanted to find his Dad.

[oenothera5]

I posted 4,745 times in 2022

That's 914 more posts than 2021!

17 posts created (0%)

4,728 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@gellalaer

@jhopegrandma

@bunjywunjy

@kippurbird

@riverwindphotography

I tagged 385 of my posts in 2022

#house of worth - 30 posts

#i will always reblog this - 25 posts

#be excellent to each other - 13 posts

#ayup - 10 posts

#so true - 7 posts

#muse likes - 6 posts

#oh yeah - 6 posts

#love the hair - 5 posts

#sigh - 5 posts

#they have a point - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 89 characters

#much of my music tastes come from a much older boy i had a crush on in junior high school

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

🍃🌺🌙If you receive this you make somebody happy. Go and send this to ten of your followers who make you happy or somebody you think needs cheering up. If you get it back even better🌙🌺🍃

Thank you! Can't wait to see you in less than a month! <3

2 notes - Posted August 8, 2022

#4

💕✨create the illusion of hanging out with your mutuals tag game✨💕

I was tagged by @perhaps-mr-collins-has-a-cousin Hello there! Stay healthy, friend!

are you a morning person?

No. Not in the slightest. Please do not chat/call/text me before I have drunk my coffee and it is past 9:00 AM.

ideal breakfast?

A soft boiled egg with a piece of toast.

favorite warm drink, and how do you take it? 

A latte with nonfat milk

sit in the sunshine or the shade? 

It depends on the time of year- if it is winter or spring, then sunshine. If it is summer, then definitely the shade.

favorite baked good? 

The oatmeal butterscotch cookies that a friend of my mom’s made when I was growing up

a song or album that makes you feel at peace? 

Rain by BTS . I like jazz, and it really does feel like looking through the window outside at a rainy day.

a chore that if someone completed it for you you’d love them forever?

Folding and putting away the laundry. Luckily, Mr. Poppy does it, mostly, because if it weren’t for him, it would just stay in the laundry basket in a heap.

favorite board/card game to play with friends?

Anything in the Rook/Euchre/Hearts/Spades family. I grew up playing Euchre as a regional thing, but Mr. Poppy’s family plays rook because they are from a different region.

what kind of snacks/candy do you want at a movie theater?

I normally like popcorn with lots of butter and a soda, but a giant roll of sweet tarts or sprees is good too.

bar with live music or bar with a pool table? 

This is tough. I really like live music, but some of my happiest times were hanging out with friends around the pool table when I was younger. I am terrible at pool, but it was about being with friends.

go-to wine/cider/beer/cocktail? 

If I am having cocktails I’ll usually order an amaretto sour.

go-to bar food? 

Nachos with lots of stuff on them.

are you tending the fire, looking at the stars, or singing campfire/folk songs?

Looking at the stars. I love watching for meteors, and looking at constellations and (if I’m far enough out of town) the Milky Way. But I will cheerfully do the other two as well! I’ve been to Wood Badge and OLS so I’m pretty good at building fires.

a favorite Scripture verse or prayer?

The prayer by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., that starts: Above all, trust in the slow work of God. [I am a very impatient person]

See the full post

3 notes - Posted February 7, 2022

#3

Personal Tag Game

I was tagged by @raksh-writes . Hi there!

Last song: “Late Night Talking” by Harry Styles. I really like it- it is such an ear worm. Very excited to see him this fall!

Last TV show: Obi-Wan Kenobi. The cinematography is amazing. Meh on the storyline though. When I die I want Pablo Hidalgo to be a pall bearer so that the Story Group can let me down one last time. Will continue watching just for the visual spectacle!

Currently watching: Also watching Bride of Habaek/Bride of the Water God. The premise started off really well but then never panned out. Instead of the search for the missing stones (which sounded cool) it’s just the two leads moping for each other and the female lead bordering on rude to her employee. Maybe other people would enjoy this plot more, but it is not what I came for. I am only watching to the end because I hate DNFs. [I also have second hero syndrome because the first lead is kinda bland. This is one of Nam Joo-Hyuk’s earliest roles so maybe he was just learning to act or the writers gave him boring material to work with]

Currently reading: Momo/The Life Before Us by Emile Ajar/Romain Gary. It’s okay. It’s better than some things I’ve read so far this year, but not the greatest. It’s in the category of boyhood/apprenticeship novels. I hope it gets better? I’m only 1/3 of the way through, and I’m supposed to have it done by the end of today. 😳

Tagging (but only if you want to play, as usual!)

@myevilmouse @sunshinerainbowsbts @hannahbee12719 @seokjinger-ale @reliablemittenmain @heilith and @jhopegrandma

6 notes - Posted May 31, 2022

#2

It’s time for my annual social media hiatus. I’ll be back April 17th. See you then!

[the queue will run for a little bit more, but if you need me, you can always find me on Discord!]

Photo information: “Mule and Rider Exiting Tunnel and Crossing Kaibab Suspension Bridge“ Black and white, silver gelatin print with some silvering. Circa 1930.

Henry G. Peabody Photographs (circa 1930). CP PEA. Greater Arizona Collection. ASU Library, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. http://azarchivesonline.org/xtf/view?docId=ead/asu/cp_pea.xml

9 notes - Posted March 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Why is my Tumblr feed suddenly showing me blogs I’m not subscribed to?

Please @staff make this stop. I only want to see what I want to see, which is posts from people I’ve followed.

12 notes - Posted January 18, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[wedezine]

Elegant Terrace Designs for Upscale Homes

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If you’re looking to elevate the ambiance of your terrace, here are some premium design ideas to inspire your next outdoor makeover. At WeDezine Studio, known for the best home interiors in Shivamoga, we specialize in creating luxurious, tailored spaces that resonate with your unique style and needs.

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2. Dramatic Lighting to Enhance the Mood

Lighting plays a pivotal role in setting a luxurious tone. Choose outdoor lighting fixtures that elevate your space, such as designer chandeliers, pendant lights, and sconces. For a softer, more intimate vibe, integrate dimmable lights, fairy lights, and lanterns. Highlight key features with LED strips along railings or in planters, adding a modern touch to your outdoor haven.

3. Luxurious Flooring Choices

The flooring you choose for your terrace forms the foundation of its elegance. Opt for high-end materials like marble, natural stone, or textured tiles to create a stunning aesthetic. For a more organic feel, wooden decking or bamboo flooring can bring a natural yet sophisticated charm, while ensuring durability and comfort underfoot.

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5. Outdoor Lounging Areas

Create a luxurious lounging space with cozy seating, throw pillows, and even a fire pit for those cool evenings. Whether hosting guests or relaxing alone, a terrace should offer a refined yet comfortable space. Consider an outdoor sofa set paired with a stylish coffee table, or a chaise lounge to offer a chic and peaceful retreat.

6. Sophisticated Outdoor Kitchen or Bar

For an elevated terrace experience, an outdoor kitchen or bar can make a world of difference. Install a high-end barbecue grill, an outdoor refrigerator, and custom cabinetry to create an ideal setting for entertaining. A designer bar area with bar stools and a cocktail station adds a touch of glamour, perfect for intimate gatherings or lively outdoor parties.

7. Private Spa Retreat

Take your luxury terrace to the next level by integrating a spa element, such as a hot tub, plunge pool, or sauna. Surrounded by greenery and sleek modern furnishings, this space can transform your terrace into a private wellness sanctuary, offering relaxation and opulence in equal measure.

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9. Custom Pergolas and Canopies

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10. Luxury Accessories and Accents

To complete your luxury terrace, consider high-end decor pieces such as sculptures, modern vases, stylish rugs, and plush throws. A bold, artistic sculpture or contemporary artwork can serve as a striking focal point, while outdoor rugs help to define seating areas, adding warmth and elegance to the space.

Why Choose WeDezine Studio for Your Luxury Terrace Design?

At WeDezine Studio, we specialize in providing the best home interiors in Shivamoga, with a deep commitment to turning your outdoor spaces into luxurious, functional havens. Our expert designers work closely with you to ensure that your terrace reflects your personal style while harmonizing with your home's interior design. Whether you seek a minimalist aesthetic or a lavish outdoor living space, WeDezine Studio is the go-to interior design studio in Shivamoga for transforming your terrace into a stunning sanctuary.

Get in touch with us today and let our team help you design the terrace of your dreams — an outdoor retreat that combines luxury, comfort, and style in one exquisite package.

By incorporating these design ideas and collaborating with a professional team like WeDezine Studio, you can transform your terrace into a luxurious retreat that will elevate your outdoor living experience, impress guests, and provide a space of ultimate relaxation. Your terrace deserves to be as opulent as the rest of your home, and with the right design, it can become a beautiful extension of your lifestyle.