#yet still patronizing as if this is a childish thing you should already know..

[tumblunni]

I like to try and explain digital art as...

This is a canvas.

This is paint.

This is a canvas and paint.

Digital art isn’t any less because it’s ‘just computers’, it isn’t some sort of magic program that makes the art for you automatically. It’s just a virtual space that mimics real life paint. Plus pencils and watercolours and all sorts of different art effects all in one place, including ones unique to the medium such as pixels or 3d modelling. All with more precise control over editing the colours and features of the brush you use. That’s the main appeal! That and also having an undo button, and being able to more easily send your art everywhere over the internet, yknow?

So, basically, your ‘art program’ cannot make anything for itself, it’s just a paintbrush. Digital artists put just as much effort into taking this spread of slightly more ethereal paintbrushes and turning them into art. So give them the respect they deserve!

Also, there’s a lot of neat stuff you can only do with digital art that might look kinda like ‘the computer just does it’ if you don’t understand all the steps the person took to actually draw the whole thing. For example, this entirely random cool photoshop edit I found on google, which has a wonderful tutorial here!

This image helps show the principle at work!

Think of photograph editing as.. well, someone literally cuts up some photographs and makes a collage. People did this even before computers, it’s the infamous source of many cryptid, alien and fairy “sightings!” But, again, it’s made easier in a virtual space and has many additional tools that couldn’t work with a physical piece of paper.

For example in this particular photo trick we have three pictures: this pretty island without a cliff underneath, a cliff from somewhere else, and a big ooky spooky halloween skull! The artist cuts out each photo, and the interface element called Layers symbolizes how you’d put those photo pieces on top of each other on your desk. Something on Layer 1 (or whatever you want to rename it) would be flat on the table, then Layer 2 is on top of it, and so forth. But the interesting thing that makes them different from real life collage is that there’s Layer Modes! Imagine if you could just flip a button and turn a normal piece of paper into tracing paper! O_O So that’s what the Multiply mode does in this particular example, and there’s many other modes that do other effects, like making a picture darker or lighter or doing a photo negative. Loads of fun! But here this person is using their semi-transparent tracing paper cutout of a cliff to make the skull look a little bit more like it’s made of rock. After this they’d manually paint in any extra details to make it look more realistic, and then use other elements of photo collage skill to add water effects and dramatic text, or whatever might pull the whole piece together. And then you have the very cool movie poster image of a beautiful island hiding an ominous secret!

Though I can understand why people might see this as ‘cheating’, since it saves a lot of time and has better results than like.. hand painting over your collage using a projector displaying the second image, cos you simply can’t do semi transparent layers in real life. But it’s still not like this particular type of virtual creation took no effort, and digital art in general isn’t easier just because this one small thing is easier. Plus, honestly, this level of photomanipulation is mostly used for silly comedy and making movie posters look better. Or drawing your friend riding a dragon as a fun christmas gift! Like any art form, the better results require more skill. Really complicated results require things like HUNDREDS of layers of pictures all smashed together, extreme painting skills and deep understanding of light and perspective to make them look like they all really happened at the same time. I think that photomanips in particular only get derided as ‘fake art’ because the basic result by a total beginning looks comparatively higher quality than beginner drawing. But I’m sure you all remember how you thought your drawings were high art as a kid, and then grew up to see all the flaws and think “Man, how did I ever miss that?” You kinda need at least a surface level knowledge of art in order to understand quality when you see it. Digital art is just a new medium to these people, so they don’t have that reference material established in their head so that they can fully appreciate the difference in effort between two pieces.

But it’s not impossible, and I’m sure someday people of both sides of the art world will be able to appreciate each other without this infighting! Besides, digital art benefits well from a background knowledge of drawing anatomy, line weight, shading, and all sorts of other things. It’s just sketching in a different dimension! And traditional art can also benefit from being scanned and transferred, and you can even restore the original versions of tarnished old paintings, without risk of damaging them! Though, I mean, it’s more like playing detective and guessing at possible interpretations? it’s still absolutely worth the effort to concoct newer and better oil residue removal solutions so that we can uncover the real paintings someday. (LOL I’M GOING OFFTOPIC A LITTLE) Plus there’s always loads of fun and really unique results when you combine digital and traditional methods! Personally i’m a huge fan of the aesthetic of real, scanned pencil lines with digital colouring, and I’m aiming to learn this and someday achieve success!

So yeah, that’s my kinda incoherant rambling digital art post, I guess XD thanks for reading, and may you have much luck in your art!

[abbacchiosbelt]

If It Bleeds | Yandere Mahito x GN Reader

CW: Yandere character, guns, manipulative behavior, mild not sfw content. 18+.

Word Count: 2.1k

The air in your house hadn’t felt the same since he’d wormed in his way inside - his disgusting aura clung to the walls like poison, inescapable and silently killing you. It’s nearly unbearable when he’s there himself, grinning as he watches your every move. Hiding is impossible from someone like him. He can slip through every crack, move through every wall. And so you’re stuck with him until he decides he’s had enough of you, the expiration date on your life ticking down day by day.

It’s all a game for Mahito. 

Today, you’re awoken by the sound of his voice calling out your name, sing-songy and taunting. There’s no point in ignoring him - if you did, he’d drag you out of bed himself. Or worse, he’d climb under the sheets and wrap his unnaturally cold body around you, laughing all the while at your discomfort. With a quiet groan, you push the sheets off yourself and climb out of bed. Mahito calls out again, an edge of irritation in his voice.

“Coming,” you call back, stifling a yawn as you slide your feet into slippers and make your way out of your room. As you expected, he’s sitting at your small kitchen table. His long, blue hair is still tied into a loose braid that he’d forced you to do the night before. The soft groans he’d made as you brushed his hair and carefully threaded it into a braid were burned into your subconscious, the slight tinge in your lower stomach they awakened making you feel disgusted. It was one of the few things in your ‘relationship’ with Mahito that had seemingly gone unnoticed by the cursed spirit, though you’re sure he’d bring it up to taunt you at some point.

Mahito’s black shirt slides off his shoulder when he raises a hand in greeting to you like he was a friend who had just popped in. The strange smell that followed him — cloyingly sweet with the scent of rot under the surface — invades your nostrils the second you sit down in the seat beside him. Mahito leans forward and smiles, one of his hands coming up to brush your hair behind your ear. You shudder at his chilling touch, and he sighs.

“Humans are so touchy. You should be used to that by now, you know?” He rolls his eyes and sits back, staring at you for a moment before his eyes light up. “I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up. I’ve been doing some research.” Mahito leans to the side and drags a bag (one of yours, you note with annoyance) onto the table, unzipping the top. “Go ahead, pull out your surprise.”

A surprise.

You blanche, giving him a wary look. He laughs, his expression mirthful. “Ah, you don’t trust me, do you? Fine, fine. I’ll get it out for you.” Mahito reaches his hand in the bag and wastes no time pulling out your ‘surprise’, his lips curling into a sadistic smirk as he points the object at you. A silver, shiny gun is pointed straight at the middle of your forehead, the entity behind the trigger unpredictable. 

You scramble out of the chair and Mahito is on top of you before you can run, his legs wrapped around your hips as he smiles down at you with the gun still in his hand. “You’re scared? You think someone like me would kill you with something as boring as this?” Mahito laughs, tilting his head towards the ceiling as he cackles. His mouth splits into an unnaturally wide grin when he finally looks back down at you. “I told you this was a present. I read something about what humans do for fun and thought I could give you a chance to play for once. This relationship is uneven, after all.”

Mahito doesn’t move from his position on top of you, even as you struggle with your full strength. The fact that he doesn’t even budge sends a wave of panic to your heart, the organ pounding against your chest so loud that you can’t even hear yourself think.

“M-mahito, let me up,” You grunt. Mahito tilts his head to one side, the hand he was using to hold the gun going limp as he carelessly waves it around. Your eyes widen in fear. “Please...”

Mahito considers you for a moment before he gingerly gets up, placing the gun back on the kitchen table. “Only since you asked so nicely. If all humans had manners like you, I wouldn’t exist.” He sticks his tongue out at you, the motion childish. “Good thing they don’t! Now get up.”

You get back on your feet and Mahito points to the seat you were in earlier, indicating for you to sit down. You follow him, not wanting to be tackled to the ground again. Mahito sits back down in his chair as well, sliding the gun across the table to you. “Pick it up.”

The weapon’s sleek casing shines in the light of the sun starting to trail through your kitchen window. You swallow. “I’ve never... touched one of these before.”

“That’s okay.” Mahito licks his lips. “There’s a first time for everything, right? Humans love that saying.” He nudges the gun closer. “I do too. There’s so much to do in your world, yet you humans don’t spend enough time indulging yourselves. I’m giving you a chance.”

You have no idea what exactly he’s going to ask you to do; Mahito was unpredictable and dangerous, just like every cursed spirit you’d heard rumors of. You never truly believed that you’d encounter one, and yet here you were with one sitting in your kitchen like he was an old friend. Mahito raises his eyebrows at your silence and you finally reach forward to pick up the gun.

The heaviness of the weapon surprises you. You tilt it this way and that, minding to point it away from Mahito even though he hadn’t given you the same courtesy. You knew little about guns except for the cardinal rule of never pointing a gun at anything you weren’t planning on shooting. You lips start to feel dry as anxiety sets into your bones as if you knew the weapon had been used before as a killing tool. Of course Mahito would give you something that had been used to take lives - it’s likely he had given it to other humans he’d played with before. Bile rises in your throat and you swallow it back. Mahito watches your discomfort with lidded eyes, entranced. 

“Don’t you want to know what I want you to do with it?” Mahito scoots his chair closer to yours. Without warning, he tugs your chair close so that the two of you are sitting knee to knee. Mahito leans in. “Press it to my forehead.”

“What?” You balk at his words. You’d be lying if you hadn’t thought about trying to get rid of him, but it was fruitless. A fantasy. Was he really going to let you kill him? No, there was no way... He was playing at something. Just another one of his sick games. He frowns at your hesitation and suddenly grabs your arms until he forcibly presses the gun against his forehead, ignoring how your hands were shaking. The frown on his face is immediately replaced with a smile once the cool metal is resting against his forehead.

“Now, now” he croons, his voice sounding much more affected than you’d ever heard it. It disgusts you - he’s getting off on this. “Put your finger on the trigger.” This time, Mahito is patient as he watches you struggle with the action, letting it slide when he notices you’re resting your finger against the side instead of curling it around the trigger. “We’re going to play a game.”

“A... a game?” You stutter. Your arms already feel heavy from the weapon, yet you know if you let them down you’ll be in for something even worse. He holds his hands, five fingers raised on his right hand and only one finger on his left. When you keep looking at him in confusion, he sighs and purses his lips before he starts explaining.

“Jeez, you really are innocent when it comes to guns, huh? Well, this makes it more fun.” He waves his fingers around. “This gun has six chambers, but only one bullet. I found out about it when I was researching guns. It’s fun and deadly, which means humans never want to play it.” He rolls his eyes. “But we can! It’s called Russian Roulette. Even if you shoot me, I won’t die.” Mahito practically pants as he speaks, and you don’t notice the way he shifts his legs. 

“But... What if you did die? Then what?” You ask. Mahito smiles at you, patronizing. 

“I won’t. But if you don’t play, I’ll play it instead. Your chances aren’t very good, wouldn’t you say?” Mahito’s lips turn down. “But I’d hate to do that so soon. You are my favorite plaything, after all.” Your heart seizes up in your chest as his words hit you - if you didn’t play along with him, he’d kill you. There was no other option. Even if he secretly planned on punishing you for playing, not playing would mean dying. What hit you harder was Mahito calling you his ‘favorite plaything’, the words making your stomach twist. There was truly no escape. You resign yourself to your fate.

“I... Okay, i-if you really want to play.” Mahito purrs out your name when he hears your response. That small, unwanted feeling in your stomach flares to life at his words. What was wrong with you? Being around the cursed spirit was eating at your psyche day by day. Mahito must have planned for it all along, forcing you to fall apart while he toyed with you. Suddenly, the game sounds like a good idea. 

Mahito notices the change in your mood and his legs shift again, his grin nearly splitting apart his face. “Mmm, now we’re ready to play. I got the gun ready. We’re taking one shot today.” He bites his lip. “We can try more shots once you’ve got some practice in.” Mahito presses harder against the gun, his eyes flickering with something you couldn’t quite place. “Pull it.”

Your finger shakes as you curl it around the gun’s trigger, putting no pressure on it yet. Mahito watches you with unrestrained glee. Without time to really think about it, you press down on the trigger and clench your eyes shut. 

A click, and nothing else. Mahito laughs, and you reluctantly open your eyes. Your drop your arms in exhaustion and let the gun clatter to the floor, not caring about the danger. Mahito is practically howling with laughter as he watches you, his eyes boring holes into you as he watches you let out the breath you were holding. You sit and stare past him until his laughter fades out, your heart pounding in your chest.

He stands from his chair and drags you up against his body, groaning in delight. There’s a hardness against your thigh, wet and leaking, that you don’t want to think about. Mahito grabs your chin with his hands, forcing you to look at him as one of his arms keeps you pressed close to his body.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it? It’s too bad you lost, but I’m glad we had this experience together.” His breath fans against your face and you wince, the smell having no descriptor that would be fitting other than death. Mahito holds you for a few more seconds before he steps back, a lopsided too-big smile on his face. “See how much fun it is when you’re allowed to indulge yourself?”

Mahito ignores your blank expression, stretching his arms above his head as he peers out one of your windows. “I’d love to play some more, but I’ve got some things to take care of today.” He takes a step toward you, and you step back. He advances until he has you pushed against a wall. “You should be nicer to me. I’ve been generous towards you.” 

Mahito leans in and presses a chaste kiss against your cheek, laughing at the startled look on your face. “We took a new step in our relationship today. I had to make sure you knew how much it means to me.” He abruptly steps away and starts to fade before your eyes, waving as his form shudders out of this dimension. “I decided something,” his voice whispers, directly against your ear. You can no longer see him, but you can feel an overwhelming presence surrounding your body.

“I think I’ll be keeping you around for a long, long time.”

[all-might-can-smash-me]

Paparazzi

Keigo Takami/Hawks x Reader

Summary: You meet Hawks one day at your store and you and him strike of a friendship that turns romantic....but the paparazzi manage to get it to the rest of the world not even 24 hours later

This shit is long, sorry not sorry

Masterlist

Crushes were just....well.... crushes, right? Especially celebrity crushes or crushes on fictional characters. Usually the average person will develop one or more crushes on celebrity or fictional beings, it was just the way the human brain (or something like the human brain for some people) worked. You yourself grew up with many celebrity and fictional crushes. The walls of your childhood room were (and probably still filled) with the posters of the heroes you adored growing up, the bands, singers, and artist you admired, and personal favorite characters from the shows or movies you’ve had seen and fell in love within the span of your teenage lifetime. Even now you admired celebrities and the such, but now it was mostly just giving them a like and follow on their tiktok or Instagram or admiring a picture or two when you came upon it, that’s it. Being an adult now and owning your own little grocery store, inherited from your parents of course, in the middle of the busy life of the city was enough to squelch your once childish habits, but sometimes you would allow yourself to flip through the gossip magazines you had set up to see the new and old faces of celebrities and heroes to see which one was hot or not, but that really wasn’t weird for such a mundane person to do.

All that crushing business would stay in the fantasy portion of your brain however, to never once think that you would have one of the fantasies you would once dream about as a teenager about a celebrity or fictional crush sweeping you away on your feet. Just thinking that something like that could happen was laughable really, it almost made you laugh now as you perused the magazine rack you had finally finished setting up, the hours of the day now almost bordering the parent’s definition of ‘its getting late’, which honestly meant that it was 7:30, as your employee hummed behind the cash register, fiddling with the pens and note pads scattered about at the counter.

“Hey, toss me one of those magazines.” Called out the cashier, you handing over the magazine, watching their hands drag towards them to let their eyes scan the bold headings on the front page and soon the face that was the eye catcher of it all. “Pro Hero Hawks is always on the front of the magazines....isn’t he so dreamy looking...” hummed out the younger girl, you only gave a snort as your hand went back to fidgeting the flimsy magazines and puzzle books that seemed only the elderly would purchase.

“Yeah, he’s handsome alright, but I don’t get my hopes up about that fantasy coming true.” You joked, the girl only giving a sad nod in agreement. With a laugh, you bent over to pick up the empty box that once held the new issues of magazines, starting to unfold it from its shape.

“Yeah I know, but still, just imagine it though....what if he just came sauntering in here now? To sweep one of us off our feet?” She said with her young, dreamy little look. You only rolled your eyes, shoving the unfolded ripped up box in the recycling bin, grabbing the magazine and giving a gentle and playful wack to the young girl’s head before placing it back on the rack.

“Yeah? Well the day that happens is the day I’ll believe anything to be possible.” You spoke with a laugh as you leaned against the counter, though the bell hanging upon the glass door gave off its soft chime to signify a new patron had entered your humble grocery store. You head automatically moved to see who had just walked in out of habit, but you probably should have already known who had entered inside your shop just by the look upon the cashier’s face. Hawks stood there at the entrance, those eyes of his glancing back and forth between you and the cashier. The shock was probably evident upon your faces.

“Um....is this like a bad time or something?” He soon questioned which you quickly shook your head at his word, finally snapping yourself out of your dumbfounded haze. Honestly there was no reason to be so shocked over another person, he was just a normal human being that was idolized who just happened to do amazing things for the safety of the society you lived in, but the coincidence of your previous conversation set your body in a rage of jitters.

“No! Not at all! Sorry if we seemed shocked, we don’t usually get sidekicks in here let alone heroes.” You spoke out with a laugh, hand sliding over the counter to give the young girl a little nudge on her shoulder to snap her out of her daze of the handsome hero before her. At that a bright blush crawled onto her face as she set her gaze down to the plastic keys of the cashier.

“Alright...cool...” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, already beginning to make his slow walk to the many things you had on display. The chips, candy, drinks, the instant ramen, the food that sat in the freezer ready to be eaten right away for the late night student or the person craving a bite or to be heated in the microwave station with running water off to the side next to the few tables you had for them to sit down and rest while they ate. The silence almost seemed to suffocate you as you listened to his shuffling and tried not to really stare. Though he seemed to hesitate a bit before finally turning around in his path, making his way up to the counter where you and the cashier still stood at.

“Sorry to bother you, but do you have any chicken ramen? Or anything that just has chicken in it or something?” He asked, hands pushing up the glasses that sat over his eyes and up upon his head. You looked to your cashier, expecting her to speak up, but that embarrassed look upon her face spoke volumes to you as you looked back to Hawks, that costumer service smile already plastered upon your face as you waved him to follow.

“Of course! I really need to take the time to organize all those products, costumers and tourist come in and always swap everything around.” You spoke up, leading him down the isles of your small store expertly before moving to the coolers of food that was ready to go/heated and the ramen. “This is our chicken selection in ramen, after you pay you can either leave and fix it at home or use our water and microwave station to eat here...then in the coolers we have onigiri with chicken....um....we carry egg and chicken Sandos...the information on how it should be consumed is on the label, so make sure your careful about reading and following the directions....” you muttered out as you pointed to all the things, which he nodded his head.

“Sorry if that question was dumb...it’s been a long day.” He said as he scratched the back of his neck. He had to admit, he felt kind of stupid asking that question now with now knowing the fact everything was honestly right in front of his face.

“We all have those days, I hope you can find something you like though, if there’s anything else I’ll be upfront.” You said as you were already heading back up to the front counter, casting a ‘pull yourself together women!’ look to your employee who only mouthed out an apology as she facepalmed and cringed at her own behavior. Hawks was soon rummaging through the ramen, arms soon filled with containers and a lonesome cup ramen, walking up to the counter to gently let everything slip onto the surface.

“Hold on, I got one more thing.” He muttered out as he stepped up to the magazine rack, shamelessly grabbing the one that had his face smack dab in the middle, tossing it onto the counter. “I swear, that’s it.” He joked, but that joke received radio silence from the cashier as her hands shakily went to begin ringing up his things. You couldn’t help but cringe for her, you didn’t blame her either, if it were you a few years ago behind that counter it would have been the same scenario.

“You want it bagged?” You asked, hand already grabbing one of the paper bags you had off to the side, ready to be used, though he only brought up a hand to politely halt your actions.

“Nah, I’ll eat here, enjoy the scenery.” He said with a little wink, already handed over the money, of course he said to not worry about the change as he scooped up everything back into his arms, whistling away to the eating area, beginning to already prepare his food, phone lazily in his hand as he did so.

“Are you ok? It seemed like you were about to drop dead any moment.” You whispered out as you leaned over the counter to your employee, she only shoving her face in her hands.

“Oh don’t even bring it up! He’s not even gone yet...” she whispered back, grabbing the paper bag that was still within your hands, placing it back, though she seemed hesitant to say something. “Could you....get his autograph for me?” She soon whispered out.

“What?!” You whispered back, casting a quick glance over your shoulder and to the hero who now lounged back at the seating area, magazine now clutched within one hand, the other feeding himself. “I don’t want to bother him, I-“ though your whispers were cut off by her own.

“Come on! Please? I’m a mess and when am I ever going to get it again?” She said, hands clasped before her as she begged to you with her whispers. You stood there, only being able to stare at her before finally nodding your head vigorously.

“Fine...fine...gimme a pen and paper...” you muttered out lowly, the girl quietly brought up a fist to the air lowly to show her victory before she scrambled around, hand clutching onto a pen, though her eyes landed on the magazines, which she gestured for you to grab one, which you did, placing it before her as she skillfully brought a pair of scissors to the cover, cutting out the front cover neatly of Hawks’ face, handing it to you along with the pen.

“Take the magazine out my pay check and I’ll owe you one too, thank you so much.” She whispered out, you only taking the pen and picture with the feeling of embarrassment already eating away at your stomach. Though you began to walk towards the eating area, almost painfully slow, trying to prolong the encounter with the hero you knew was going to be probably awkward.

“Hey...um...can I get your autograph?” You asked, handing over the pen and paper to him. You tried to seem nonchalant about it, but the minute shake in your hands almost blew your cover as he looked up from the gossip columns he was reading, swallowing the food that was in his mouth.

“Yeah, sure!” He said, that same charming smile that graced the covers of every magazine now plastered upon his face and it honestly has you in a trance. You didn’t even notice he took the pen and paper from your hands if it weren’t for the soft brush of his fingers against yours that sent your body into a mess of tingles from the sensation. “What’s you name sweetheart? I bet it’s something that sounds pretty, you know, to match you.” He said with a smirk, pen already scribbling down his signature.

“What?” You dumbly said, though a soft blush had risen to your cheeks as you shook your head. “Sorry, the autograph isn’t for me, it’s for my employee.” You cleared up, leaning up against the table that was adjacent to the one he sat in.

“Oh, gotcha.” He said as he capped the pen, soon handing it back to you along with the autograph of the improvised photo. He had to admit, he was kind of disappointed that it didn’t seem like you were his fan. “Whose signature would you like anyway? I could probably get it for you though, to even the score between you and your employee over there.” He said, looking past you and raising his hand to give a teasingly flirtatious wave to her, amused to see the young girl turn into a blushing mess as she hid behind her hair.

“Well you know, I like All Might, who doesn’t, you, Endeavor, you know, the ones I see most often on those magazines.” You said as you motioned to the magazine that was now left open and off to the side of where he had stopped reading. “But maybe if I was younger I would have died and resurrected to get any of those autographs. Now? I got more important things to worry about.” You said with a little laugh as you motioned to the establishment around you.

“An independent business gal? Hm, I like it.” He said with another one of those borderline flirtatious smirks, leaving your insides a frenzy upon a single glance, but only if you knew those soft chimes of your voice were seemingly tugging at his own heart gently. “I’ll be sure to keep supporting the business then.” He said as he soon stood up, almost looming over you for a second before he had moved to toss away his trash in it’s respected trash can, the magazine now tucked under his arm, wings ruffling a bit as he made his way to that glass door smudged with the many fingerprints off that day’s patrons “Catch ya on the flip side!” He said with a laugh before casting another amusing wink to the cashier, the door shutting with another chime, living the store in a silence until it was filled with your employer’s squeals.

“He winked at me! He smirked at me! He smiled at me!!! But did you even hear what he told you!” She gushed out as you were now back up to the front, handing her the autograph, pen set back aside. “He was totally making googly eyes at you and flirting with you!” She said as she hugged the autograph close to her chest, though stopped soon to smooth out the paper.

You only brushed it off as just her fantasies gone haywire within her head, but only if you could tell the future. He had become a regular costumer. He’d saunter in right at the same time ever night, get the same things every time. It came to the point where you or the cashier working would gather everything right before he would enter, which it always seemed to brighten his face up when everything would already be waiting for him to pay at the counter. Then he would chat up a storm with you. About what? Anything! Your favorite color? He wanted to know what it was and why. Favorite food? How was your day? He always kept a conversation going with you, always managed to squeeze out a blush and get you to laugh that laugh that was contagious, at least it was for himself. It was all like a really strange dream that you couldn’t wake up from, because who would have ever thought that this is how you spent some of the hours of your day doing?

“Hawks? What is that?” You questioned as you were stocking the magazines for your usual late hour routine, watching him carry in a box carefully through the door way, setting it gently down on the sales counter.

“Come on, look.” He said, you placing the stack of magazines that were once balanced in your arms back in the box at your feet, now free to move beside him, eyes trained on him and soon to the box. “Well go on, it’s not gonna bite you....I hope.” He teased, you only giving a roll of your eyes as you pushed back the flaps, eyes soon peering in.

“What?!” You exclaimed as you soon reached in, pulling out the contents of the box carefully. It seemed like it was never ending with framed pictures of almost every pro hero worth mentioning in Japan. “What in the world? Why-?” Though he only gave a smug smile as he coolly leaned his back up against the counter.

“Oh you know....to hang them up somewhere around here, give a little spice you know.” He said with a shrug of his shoulders. “People will come in and see them, then they’ll tell others that this is probably getting a lot of attention from the pros so then it will get others to come and blah blah blah...” he said, crossing his arms before casting a glance down at you as you admired the many signatures before you. “Plus I had some free time to bother them all for their autographs and I just really wanted you to one up this little gal here.” He said, motioning to the girl at the cash register who had become all too familiar now with pro hero now thanks to seeing him every night, but that didn’t stop her from still almost dying of embarrassment.

You only responded to his words with an embrace, arms thrown around his neck as you let out your amused giggles at his explanation, that grin upon your face all the validation he needed to answer whether or not you liked it.

“Thank you, Hawks, that was thoughtful of you....even if your attentions were only to be competitive.” You mumbled out, feel the soft rumble of your voice against his chest as he returned the hug back. The contact with you was satisfying, but you pulled away even if he honestly could just have spent an eternity like that.

He was right though, once those bad boys were up on display, your business got more traction. Tourist would come, fans would come to admire the neatly framed autographs and munch away at the eating area and geek away and other heroes had begun to visit your humble store as well. Your store hours had soon turned into 24/7, the place becoming a hot spot for heroes and sidekicks in the area during their patrol hours. People like Fatgum would come during the day for a quick fix and Eraserhead, who had also become a regular costumer in the late night patrols, would come to get a pick me up for the rest of his late patrols. Heck, you now even had superhero merchandise now on that you could barely keep stocked!

“Hawks! You missed it! Endeavor was in here! The Endeavor!” Called out the cashier as Hawks had stepped through the door, seeming to forget the painful embarrassment she would usually feel with interacting with him.

“Endeavor? Really? I’m actually even shocked at that.” He said with a grin as he leaned against the counter, a hand reaching up to absentmindedly twist the messy strands of his hair, wings giving a quick stretch before folding themselves back, one of his feathers placing the money for his usual purchase down on the counter as his free hand slid all of the food he would buy toward himself.

“Yeah, he’s scarier in person.” You called out with a laugh as you appeared from the storage room, a hand reaching up to push back the frizzy strands of hair that had escaped from your hairdo. “But yes, he did stop by to buy one of those cheap jumbo sized bottled water.” You recalled as you soon stood beside him, hands on your hips as you looked quizzically out to your store, trying to see if you missed anything. Hawks took that moment to look over to you, eyes adoring the scrunch of your eyebrows that formed when you were stressful thinking about something.

“Hey, you know, I did get that pretty name from you, but how about a number....and possibly a date?” He soon spoke, fingertips tapping against the counter top, you snapping out of your train of thought to look at him, eyebrows raised.

“Excuse me?” You asked, a little lost for words at his own that he spoke out. He seemed to not be affected though as he now stood up straight, a hand still rested on the counter’s surface.

“I’m asking you out on a date and I also want you number.” He bluntly said with his phone already in his hands with a smirk as he watched in amusement to see you physically try and let yourself process what he had just said. You were honestly trying to make sure your brain wasn’t really just playing a lucid fantasy before your eyes. Though finally you grabbed his phone, thumbs tapping down your number before handing it back to him.

“Great, I’ll pick you up at what, 7:30 tomorrow? Dress nice, I’ll get your address later.” He said as he was already backing out of the store, food forgotten on the counter, leaving you a numbed mess of nerves, your cashier in a frenzy at what she had just witnessed. He was true to his word too, he got your address from you and he showed up to the front door of your apartment with a knocked right on time the next day, handsome in his smart clothes, it was strange to see him out of his hero costume, a pair of shades over his eyes.

“Hey, you think these glasses are a good disguise?” He asked with a grin as he reached a hand up to straighten them out as you opened the door, though you only snorted as you leaned against the door frame.

“I would say so....if it weren’t for those.” You said as you motioned to his wings, which he only let out a laugh as he watched you slip on your shoes and retrieve you purse.

“Shit, you’re right, but first let me just say that you simply take my breath away.” He said as he admired you, you only rolling eyes as you nudged forward into order to step out into the hall to close and lock your door. The date, was nice, a little more intimate than the conversations you had at your business, but still, they felt like they could go on for hours and hours. It was those kinds of conversations that just made you feel...complete? It was the type of conversation that by the end would make your throat and mouth dry, but in a good way from all the talking and laughing that would be exchange. It was the type of conversation that made you feel energetic and your face hurt from the bashful smiles and grins he would grow upon your lips. They would have went for hours and hours if it weren’t for the servers starting to get antsy about the need for the two of you to leave in a timely manner for the next reservation. The car ride home was quiet between the two of you with only ambiance from the rain that had begun to fall, the fellow traveling cars, and the soft low music that purred from his radio. Though there didn’t need to be any conversations to be spoken as his hand rested upon your thigh over the dress you wore, your pinky hooked with his. That was all the conversation you needed as he helped you out of the vehicle, the two of you making your way quickly through the downpour of rain and inside of the apartment complex and up to your floor where you soon stood before him at your door, your fingers gently hooked to his as you looked up to him.

“I...enjoyed tonight.” You soon spoke up, letting go of his hand to reach your own hand up to push back the pieces of your hair that managed to get soaked and stick to the side of your face. Another bit of silence lifted as all Hawks felt he could do was just be mesmerized by you before him. Those lips came upon yours finally, the both of you caught in a passionate kiss that you enjoyed every second of until he pulled away.

“Open that door...” he softly spoke out, nodding his head to the locked door that stood beside the two of you. The jingle of your keys was a melody that sent goosebumps up his arms and jitters to his hands that rested upon your hips as he listened to the keys slide into the lock and jiggle around before that damned door was open.

“Keigo Takami....that is who I am...” he softly spoke out behind the privacy of the closed door and also against the smooth skin of your face that he was currently peppering many soft and gentle kisses upon.

The next morning you were the first to awake, stretching as you sat up at the side of the bed, eyes staring to the early hours of morning beyond the window. The confirmation of last night snoring beside you, wings jutting out in awkward angles, feathers ruffled from sleep. You let a soft smile crawl onto your lips as a hand reached to gently smooth over his hair before getting up, getting dressed, and leaving the apartment with a single note behind.

“Gone to work....lock door when you leave, key is at front door...” he groggily mumbled out as he scratched his head, fingertips gently holding up the sticky note that was stuck to the reflective surface of the fridge. He only shrugged his shoulders as he rummaged through the pantries, finally accumulating cereal, a bowl and spoon, and milk, soon getting his fixing and placing everything away, now lazily lounging on the couch, bowl of cereal in hand as he turned on the tv to munch away at his breakfast.

“Now that the weather and national news is out the way, we have some pretty hot topics on our top heroes!” Chipped out the upbeat women on the tv screen, which Keigo only rolled his eyes at.

“Hot you say? Yeah sure, bring it on sister...” he muttered out as he only continued to shovel the cereal into his mouth as he continued to listen, that bored look etched onto his face.

“Now today we are faced with the conundrum of if our beloved Hawks has found love or turned player.” Came out the voice again, though Keigo only froze, gulping down the cereal that was in his mouth.

“What?!” He shouted, now at the edge of his seat as he glared down to the tv screen through his groggy eyes.

“Our team managed to capture pictures of Hawks and this mystery woman and from what eye witness say, he and the mystery woman entered the apartment after their date at....” though the words were drowned out by the blaring of his phone ringing, which he was quick to answer it.

“Shit....yeah I know.....damage control, what? No, I’m not just screwing around with her!” he shouted into the phone as he shoveled the rest of the cereal into his mouth, placing the bowl in the sink before beginning to pace around your kitchen.

“Hey! The new issues of magazines came in early!” Called out the morning hour worker as you stepped in, raising a brow as you stepped up to the delivery that was already waiting for you at the rack of magazines.

“Really? That’s odd...” you mumbled out as you bent down, starting to rip off the tape and pull back the flaps, reaching a hand in to grab one of the magazines to pull it out, eyes looking to the bold headlines on the cover.

‘Hawks Turned lover? Or player?’

Your hands viciously opened up the magazine, flipping to the page that the story was advertised to be on, your jaw dropping upon seeing the paparazzi photos of you and Keigo of him picking you up, of the two of you on your date , and the kiss shared between the two of you and of him entering your apartment. It was like your body was frozen as you stared down to the photos in front of you, your life now on blast to the whole world.

“Shit..” you finally managed out as as you roughly closed the magazine, shoving it back into the box, your employee staring at you with a raised eyebrow.

“What’s wrong with them?” They asked, watching you lift the box up from the ground, maneuvering behind the counter to set them behind it, pushing the box far under.

“Just...don’t touch them, I’m not putting those on display.” You spoke out nervously, standing up and wiping off the sweat that had begun to accumulate on the palms of your hands, though the gasp of your employee caught your attention as they looked down at their phone.

“Pictures have just surfaced of Hawks chilling around almost butt ass naked in some mystery girl’s apartment.” He spoke out, flipping the phone to your wide eyes. Sure enough, there he was, bowl of cereal within his hands as he sat on your couch in his boxers through the windows of your apartment. “Hell yeah, Hawks got himself a lady friend.” The morning’s cashier joked, but no laughter was going to be heard from you as you were quick to make an excuse to leave the store.

“I don’t care how it’s done! I just need a statement saying that the woman is my fucking girlfriend and that legal actions will be taken because geez, I don’t know, they showed off where she lived to everyone who doesn’t live under a rock in Japan!” He said as he leaned his elbows against the counter top in your kitchen, hand burying itself in his bed hair, fingers tugging and pulling at tangles that would try to trap around his fingers. The front door of the apartment opening caught his attention as he looked to see you standing there rigidly, door quickly closed behind you as you stared at him.

“I don’t know what those people were thinking, they doxxed the shit out of her, yes we are gonna have to move her....yeah..” he spoke into the phone, you finally removing your shoes and calmly seating yourself at the kitchen counter, looking to the feathers on his wings that were still ruffled from sleep. Finally he hung up, phone placed on the counter top, a silence falling between the two of you before he spoke up. “That was quite the scare....you sure you still wanna be with me?” He said jokingly as he rubbed his face, already feeling his insides cringing from the embarrassment that seemingly felt like it was trying to swallow him whole. You couldn’t help but let out a laugh as you shook your head at his words.

“Keigo....lets not ask stupid questions....”

[tallyovie-writes]

Pictures of Us | f. w. Part 2

part 1

Summary: all the paintings choose a student to patron, the Lady chooses you and watches as you and Fred Weasley grow in the same direction

Warning:none, might contain little angst, nothing serious

2k words

@sirenswhispers @discoverablefeelings @capture-the-moment-on-camera @sophieswizardswheezes

Sixth year, December

The corridors buzzed with excitement. With only less than two weeks to the Yule Ball boys were running around in desperate need of finding partners while girls were frantic about not being asked. Of course the already paired ones watched the madness spread with a smug smile on their lips.

The Paintings also had the time of their lives, the new puppets on their chessboard gave back a little life to their fading colours. Now they could play matchmaker from an even bigger selection.

The Lady wanted to be proud to say she did not take part in such childish acts, but she had a mission with those two before the second task. It's not like she could do much, but occasionally if she heard a french boy talking about inviting her patron to the dance she faked sadness as she gave the poor boy the news that you were indeed taken.

You weren't indeed taken.

Madness has yet to engulf you, but you weren't calm either. Collita was asked by a bulgarian boy, but you had doubts whether there weren't threats made by her that overpowered the poor boy's common sense.

You would have been fine with the two of you going together, but now that she had a partner, you weren't planning on being the third wheel.

You forced these thoughts out of your mind for now. You had more important things going on.

The Lady's corridor was full of students as usual, so you weren't surprised when you entered the DADA classroom someone almost knocked you off your feet.

"Watch where you are goi.....oh..." you started telling off your attacker, but as you looked up Fred Weasley held eye contact.

Ever since that encounter in the potions storage room things have changed. You haven't really met after that, the two of you gave a wide berth to one another. No funny business, no prank. When you did run into each other, a sudden awareness filled your body. He made no snarky comments, his usual sarcasm nowhere to be found. You didn't bring up the secret of the castle, and he didn't bring up the date. Like an unspoken deal has been made without either of your knowledge. It was awkward at best. You didn't think anyone noticed, there was only bad blood between you before.

He didn't reply, he didn't apologize for running you over. He took a long look at your face, lingering on details only he could see. Without his usual grin, he left the scene as fast as he came, robes flying around him.

"What was that? Has something happened between you two?" seems like someone noticed after all.

"Nothing besides me agreeing to a date, him agreeing to let me in on a secret, and our mutual ghosting. How is your french boy by the way?" you feigned innocence.

Collita's jaw hit the floor.

"I'm joking. Don't get your knickers in a twist."

"You know I wouldn't even be surprised. With all the sexual tension you two radiate, I wouldn't put it past you that I could find you in a broom closet with him."

Now it was your turn to let your jaw hit the floor.

"Well then, good to know nothing is going on..."

Boy, if you'd known...

Sixth year, yule ball

It wasn't that bad of an evening. You could say it could have been quite magical. The house elves outdid themselves, even the usual house rivalry crawled back to its gloomy hole.

The icicles lost their naturally given cold arua just like the stone walls' usual grim facade. White dominated, but was quickly swept by the wide range of colourful dress robes, Dumbledore's glittery lilac fabric showing how it's done properly.

It really wasn't your date's fault either that you didn't really enjoy yourself. The poor boy tried everything, but besides polite conversation you weren't capable of anything else.

You were standing alone by the food table, the ravenclaw boy left a while ago to try his luck somewhere else, probably with bigger chances.

You saw Collita bent over from laughter silent tears running down her face, her date was watching her with parted lips in amazement. Eyes big, positive surprise written on his face. Collita did that to people. She was naturally gifted with a charming personality, she drew you in, spoke to you like you were on a pedestal.

She made you feel seen. A secret talent that you were rather jealous of on several occasions.

Suddenly you felt sick of the swirling mesmerized faces, the colours were too vibrant, the music too loud, too many bodies pressed together.

Before the walls started closing around you, you left your previous position and made your way to the exit that led to the gardens. The only sound that was registrateable to your ears were only your own footsteps.

Fresh air cut your rapid breathing shorter. You slowed down, the Great Hall's chokingly sweet smells started to fade away into the night.

"Wouldn't say rushing to the night with only a light silk material covering you was a smart choice, wasn't it? I took you to be a lot smarter than that, love. You're gonna get sick." a soft voice interrupted you.

Fred Weasley stood next to the bushes.

"Well, being sick would mean I wouldn't have to see your ugly face in class, so..." you replied but your voice lacked its usual fierceness. You were too tired.

He chuckled at your reply.

"I don't wanna go back there.." you started in a low voice, barely understandable, but gathered your poise and frowned as you said the last sentence. "They are too happy in there anyway."

"Is that jealousy in your voice?" he found so goodly which strings of you he should pull.

"And what if it is?" you snapped at him.

A ghost of his usual smug grin appeared on his face.

"Get your big nose out of my business by the way!"

"Well love, you know what they say about big nosed guys..." he lazily shrugged, hands in the pockets of his robe.

"Get lost, Weasley, I'm not in the mood today."

Maybe it was the hint of desperation in your voice, or the pathetic look you might have presented, but he stopped picking your brains.

"Come in, Y/S/N, you might even find the bloke of your dreams tonight." Fred tilted his head to the side.

"I'm not interested in 'finding a guy' to be my only goal." you scoffed at his remark.

"Well then, as the only guy you talk to right now, I feel obligated to spare you from the clutches of the cold and sickness, so pretty please get your ass in here."

"I'll stay until I decide it's enough. But thank you for your concern. Bye Fred Weasley, 'find the girl of your dreams' tonight." you rolled your eyes at him.

Little did you know, he already did.

Despite the cold, the Lady felt your frozen heart start melting, even if you haven't realized yet.

Sixth year, few days after the Yule Ball

"I don't understand why you thought it was a good idea to freeze your pretty little ass out there in a low cut silk dress in winter."

You groaned out in frustration.

Collita didn't spare you despite the fact that you were bloody sick, and fuckin hurting everywhere.

"Madam Pomfrey said you won highest fever of the year." she mentioned between stealing a few of your get-well sweets. "At least you finally won something." she winked at you.

"Get out, and let me suffer alone you bimbo!" you hissed at her, but the sharp pains shooting down your neck really destroyed to effect you were trying to achieve.

"Alrighty, my little pathetic friend, I suppose I can leave you to your demise. Be a good and obedient patient." she sent you a kiss and strolled out the Hospital Wing.

**

In the Hospital Wing, after curfew

After Collita left you to suffer on your own Madam Pomfrey gave you a light sleeping tonic. You welcomed the sweet oblivion in the place of pain.

A light noise disturbed the calming darkness. Opening your eyes was a too heavy task, so you relied on your hearing. A soft fumbling could be heard, but the person near your bed executed the deed quite clumsily as the most colourful swearing left their mouth.

Fighting against the tonic's luring effect, you tried opening your eyes. When you did, you almost jerked back in surprise.

Fred Weasley stood there with an innocent smile on his face, like a child caught in a naughty act, his hands were midair frozen on the spot hovering above your stack of sweets.

"What the fuck are you doing in the middle of the night standing near my bed?" you demanded and pulled your blanket further to your neck. "Are you setting up a prank?"

"Have a little faith in me, Y/N...if it were a prank you would only know it before it happened and that's already too late. Can't a bloke visit his sick classmate? The classmate he warned against the cold?" you scoffed at his pointed stare.

"In the middle of the night?"

He started scratching the back of his neck.

"Good point. A point I should probably elaborate on." he didn't seem like someone who wanted to elaborate.

"Don't let me stop you from doing that..." you rolled your eyes at him.

He seemed a little awkward and you could barely hide your amusement. It is not every day a Weasley gets a little intimidated and loses his usual cockiness.

"You see..." he started but his gaze was still fixated on his hands. "...I felt a tad responsible for you catching a cold.

Your eyebrows raised in surprise.

"If it weren't for me dancing on your nerves in the garden making you irritated enough to stay outside longer than intended, you wouldn't be here right now." he sounded a little guilty and you couldn't help the warmth that started spreading in your stomach.

You started to chuckle.

"Weasley. It's alright." you felt a sudden bravery envelop you as you said the next words nonchalantly. "You owe me another secret and we are even."

You waited for his reaction.

He didn't disappoint. He lifted his head, brown eyes locking into your own. Now you weren't sure if it was a wise idea to make him remember your deal back in the potion storage room.

"And here I thought I could bribe you with chocolate that I nicked from the kitchen...you are not a woman easily pleased." he didn't seem that sad about this fact.

"Where would be the fun in that?"

"Right."

Silence fell upon the two of you. Eyes still interlocked, you weren't sure if minutes or hours passed by. The Hospital Wing's darkness faded, and the freckles splattered across his face became more contrasted than before. He tilted his head to the side, his gaze burned your skin.

Suddenly becoming aware of the weirdness of the situation you cleared your throat and looked away.

"Since the tonic made me hungry like a wolf, I'll accept that nicked chocolate." you said, trying to break the silence.

Fred smiled and threw you the bar he fumbled around with before. Your catch was nothing sort of graceful and you felt embarrassment tint your cheeks.

Looking down at the bar in your hand you felt your eyes grow big.

"How did you know this is my favourite?" you asked astonishment, creeping into your voice.

"Lucky guess." he shrugged. You didn't need to know that every time the Grand Hall's tables were filled with this, he couldn't look away from the joy radiating on your face. Just like now.

"Your taste is impeccable, I gotta say."

Oh yes, his taste was indeed impeccable, but not just in chocolate.

[what-is-denial-if-not-fanfiction]

AU! Where Peter doesn't know Erik is his father. Just a little ficlet that's been on my mind lately.

---------

The best thing about Pietro Maximoff was his sister, Wanda. They were opposites in everyway - she was jaded, Peter was happy-go-lucky. They would argue and almost blow up Marya's house but it was their thing. In every moment that defined who Peter was she was there.

Then Wanda died. And Peter couldn't do anything. He should have seen it coming. But he didn't.

So, surrounded by his friends,  who had decided to throw him a surprise birthday party - he had never felt so alone.

"Do.. you not like it?" Ororo tentatively asked.

Peter was staring blankly at the cake, eerily still. He didn't want to celebrate, not when he knew he wasn't supposed to be alone.

"I'm sorry I- need to go," he choked out.

"Peter, wait!" Mystique yelled after him, but he was already too long gone.

--

Time moved far too slowly for Peter. But Wanda had always been there to make it a little bit more bearable. He knew that her spiral started when their powers manifested. People would look at them in disdain, twins who had red and silver hair and a boy who couldn't keep still for more than a single second. So they hid their powers even if it only lasted for a while.

They'd spend their days wondering what would have happened if their father was there to teach them. Would they then feel any semblance of normalcy? Would they be accepted? Would he be proud of them?

They'd spend hours making plans, that once they turned eighteen they'd set out to find their father, even if it was just to know.

Even when they were apart they could always feel what the other was, where the other was. Then nothing.

The days when they fought were always the worst, where Wanda would tell Peter that he couldn't possibly understand - not knowing how to control your powers. She was right, he didn't. But that didn't mean that Peter suffered anything less. What he wouldn't give now, to make even those days last forever.

Peter sat beneath his favorite tree in Westminster Manor, where he would often be found listening to his walkman watching the students of the school.

The moon was beautifully full tonight, and the thick coolness of the midnight air was wrapping itself around Peter like a blanket. Taking another swig at his beer, he looked down at the photo he held reverently between his fingers and the tears started to flow again.

--

Erik, like the rest of the X-men, was left worried by the reaction that the boy had. Charles had advised to give Peter time, and in Erik's defense, he had certainly tried - but something pulled him towards the boy. At first he had tried to ignore the niggling ache whenever he was near him but he couldn't help but be drawn in.

Thankfully, it didn't take too long to find the silver-haired boy.

"Why did you leave?" Erik asked, sitting down beside Peter. And suddenly a pair of startlingly glassy eyes were set on him. Peter had been crying.

"Because there used to be two cakes. Now, there's only one," Peter said.

He was confused, was Peter truly greedy enough to be upset by, God forbid - a lack of cake?

"What do you mean-" his voice laced with irritation. But was cut off by himself when his eyes landed upon a photo that Peter was holding.

"I had a twin."

And it didn't elude Erik that Peter had used the word had. Past tense.

"I'm sorry."

"Nah man, I probably owe the guys an apology for leaving like that. It's just-"

"You don't have to say anything," putting his hand on Peter's shoulder. He was surprised how much the boy leaned in to his touch, but he knew what it felt like to grieve.

"She killed herself, a couple of months before Apocalypse. I guess she was finally tired of hiding, of being ridiculed, of being feared. I knew she felt bad but I never did anything. I should've seen it coming."

"You shouldn't have had to hide."

"I know, but for a guy who moves as fast as me, I always seem to be too late."

There were no words that Erik could offer, not without sounding patronizing nor hypocritical. He knew first hand what it was like for your powers to fail you. With Anya, with Magda, with Nina.

"Tell me about her-" gesturing to the photo "-what was she like, was she a runner like you?"

Peter's mouth twitched, barely making a ghost of a smile.

"Wanda? A speedster? Pfft. No. No. She was- like Jean. From her powers and red hair to boot."

"Oh?"

"At first I was so jealous because she manifested earlier than me. She was nine then. I was eleven when my powers showed up and even still man, she could make beams and move things and read minds and me, I could run," Peter snorted derisively.

"Don't put yourself down Peter, God knows what I would've done with powers like yours."

"I'm sorry about them."

"What else?" choosing instead to change the topic.

"We..uh, this was taken in our backyard-" looking down at the photo "we'd pretend to be superheroes, I was Quicksilver and she'd be Scarlet Witch. Drove our aunt crazy we did - having to clean the backyard with the mess we made."

"Aunt? You don't live with your parents?"

"No. Our mom died giving birth to us"

"And your father?"

"We don't know him. He doesn't even know exist. All we got from our aunt was that he could control metal and his name."

"They told me you control metal"

"My mom once knew a guy who could do that"

Erik went still. Sensing this Peter hastily added, "Don't worry man, it's not you."

"His name?" His heart was beating rapidly - some quick math was all it took, Peter was 28. His voice apprehensive even to his own ears.

"Magnus Eisenhardt."

Erik remained frozen in his seat. Beside him was Peter - his son. His son that he didn't even know he had. The joy that suddenly filled him knowing he had someone was quickly overtaken by anguish - he had a son that he was never there for, and yet another daughter dead.

For the blow to be lessened or worsened by that he didn't know. He didn't know her at all to truly grieve, but that was the point wasn't it - he didn't know her and she was gone before he could.

"He was the reason I came here."

"Really, why?" Erik had said with forced casualty, only hoping that Peter wouldn't notice.

"Wanda- she.. she always wanted to find him. To meet him, we made plans back then to look for him but they never happened. When she died, I thought... maybe, if I could find him for her, she'd be happy. And the Professor technically owes me for breaking you out - so I thought maybe he could help finding him with Cerebro. But then Apocalypse happened and.." Peter's thoughts trailed.

"And now?" Erik had to know.

"I don't know anymore. I wanted to find him even then, but I'm 28 now. When I was a kid, when we were kids we'd dream of being with him and finally feeling normal. Like we belonged. Marya tried. She really did - but she could only do so much to help us. Now, he- he's probably moved on. A different family, a new life. I don't want to disturb all that for some childish dream. I mean, what am I even gonna say when I meet him? When he demands proof? 'Hi I'm Peter, I'm your son, so remember my mom? She was your wife, you had a daughter then there was a fire then she died and then she left? Turns out she was pregnant and now there's me. Did I mention I have twin? She's dead too by the way'" a bitter chuckle rose from Peter.

How ironic then that Peter was saying that to his father. He knew that had Peter known he wouldn't have said so, so bluntly but that wouldn't make it hurt any less than the knife that was now twisting in his gut.

"Peter-"

"Pietro." The boy replied.

"It's my real name. We had to change our names to fit in. We already had silver and red hair. Only takes a weird name for us to be branded even more freakish than we already were."

Erik's mouth was as dry as cotton now, and tears were threatening to slip from his eyes.

"We should... probably head back man. I'm sorry for bothering you like this. I just-"

"Pet- Pietro. You didn't bother me. I came here. I- any man would be happy to know you're their son. If you want to talk again..."

Peter smiled. "Thanks, Erik."

Ps. Was definitely not proofread. I'm sorry.

[kazenoshun]

The 8 O’Clock Song: A Coco fanfic

Summary: Coco AU -  It's been 10 years since Imelda Rivera was abandoned by her no-good husband and she banished music from her life. She's content to keep away from music for the rest of her life, but a chance encounter during a trip to Mexico City may turn that resolution on its head.

A/N:  I have made an attempt to include some Spanish (mostly names) in this fic to mimic the style of the film, but I make no claim to being fluent in the language, so if you spot any problems, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix them.

Also,  I'd like to thank @faceheightknifefight​ and another friend (who does not have a Tumblr account) for their help in editing this fic. They're awesome!

FF.net, AO3, DA

The streets of Mexico City were full of noise, smoke, and far too many people, and Imelda Rivera could hardly wait to get home to her family in small, quiet Santa Cecilia. She’d never been fond of the big city. If she’d had her way, she would already be on the train back home, arriving in time to wish her daughter, Coco, goodnight before bed, and no doubt scold her twin brothers, Oscar and Felipe for some mishap or other. Unfortunately, she hadn’t gotten her way all day.

She’d gotten up before dawn to catch a train to the city, in order to view a new shipment of leather, place her order, and discuss the possibility of buying a new machine for the shop. She was against the idea herself, but her brothers were convinced it would improve the quality, and quantity, of Rivera shoes so she’d agreed to at least gather some information. The salesman she’d met had yammered on long enough to make Imelda seriously consider not purchasing the new machine out of sheer spite. His poorly disguised distaste for women in the shoemaking profession had merely been the final nail in the coffin. Having thoroughly wasted her morning and the better part of her afternoon, she finally arrived at the tanner’s only to learn that the shipment of leather had been delayed and wouldn’t be available until the following morning. Had such a day occurred when Imelda was just beginning her career in shoemaking, she might have broken down crying. Which wasn’t to say that she didn’t want to cry now, but she hadn’t allowed herself the luxury of weeping over her problems since she started, and she wasn’t about to begin now.

If she could survive Coco’s childhood as a single parent, she could survive one day of setbacks.

Still, she did allow herself a small huff and a frown as she entered La Caléndula, the sleepy little restaurant the innkeeper had recommended for dinner. Not terribly charming of her, she knew, but she didn’t particularly care to be charming right now - especially knowing many men tended to view charm as an invitation. All she wanted was to order her dinner, eat, and return to the inn to close out her terrible day.

The man behind the bar was an older gentleman with more gray than black in his hair, in the few places it still grew, and a moustache that seemed to cover the entire lower half of his face. He took her order with quiet efficiency, and, after hearing he’d been recommended by the innkeeper, directed her to a small table in the corner where she would be able to eat in peace.

Imelda let out a sigh as she sank into her chair and off her feet. Between the salesman who couldn’t be bothered to offer a chair during his presentation, and walking what seemed to be half-way across the city to the tanner, her feet ached. She wore good shoes, of course. She’d made them herself. But even the best shoes couldn’t alway prevent the sort of ache that accompanied a day on one’s feet. As the ache in her feet faded, she found herself thinking of home and family. They would be sitting down to dinner themselves by now, possibly cooked by one of the twins, but more likely by Coco. The girl would be 14 soon, only a year away from her quinceañera, and was growing more self-sufficient by the day.

Needing something to take her mind off her long day, Imelda turned her thoughts to potential birthday gifts for Coco, a far more palatable idea than lost orders or snobby salesmen. A new pair of shoes was a given, of course, but perhaps it was time Coco had a new dress as well. She’d nearly outgrown her last Sunday dress. Should the new dress be pink, though? Or perhaps blue? Imelda could turn the unintended stay in the city into a chance to look for fabric and findings. Yes, that would be most productive, and save her a second trip. She would start looking in the morning.

Her concentration was broken by the sound of someone tuning a guitar.

Imelda’s eyes snapped open, though she wasn’t sure when she’d closed them, and she glared at the table with enough ferocity she almost felt it should crack under the pressure. Of course someone would be playing music here. It was a perfectly terrible ending to her perfectly terrible day. She ground her teeth and clenched her hands into fists to override the childish urge to stick her fingers in her ears. She had some dignity, after all.

It had been nearly 10 years. Nearly 10 years she’d gone since banning music from her life. 10 years of being laughed at, of enduring the mariachi following her around the market betting on who would get her to break, of scolding Coco again and again each time she caught her daughter singing or dancing. 10 long years of hating him, her no-good bum of a husband who’d left her alone with a child to raise and never come back. He’d chosen music over them, over her, so she would let him have it all.

Her eyes sought out the source of the sound unbidden, whether from morbid curiosity or to know who to avoid when she left, she wasn’t sure. When the server arrived with her food, she would pay and leave. She hated wasting money, but she couldn’t stand to listen to the guitar even one minute longer than she had to. There was a small stage along the wall opposite the bar, but it was empty. The night’s performer must have been preparing off-stage. The other restaurant patrons were unfazed by the guitar as they enjoyed their food and drinks, several of them conversing quietly together. All of them ignorant of the burning fury inside Imelda. The guitar tuning morphed into a proper song, a very familiar song, but the stage remained empty.

Imelda nearly sprang from her seat and marched out the door; good manners and fact she hadn’t paid yet aside, she didn’t want to stay and hear the song butchered like it always was. Like the mariachi back home always did, even though they knew the way it was supposed to be played, the way it had been played before he allowed it to be butchered after walking out of their lives. She redoubled her efforts to spot the musician, determined to stay as far away as possible when she left, only to freeze when she finally spotted him.

Him, her no-good husband, Héctor, sitting on a stool in the corner across hers holding a banged-up guitar in his arms, playing Poco Loco with a blank look on his face.

The plate of food being set down in front of her startled her badly enough that she jumped.

“Perdón, señora,” the server -not the bartender, but maybe his son? She didn’t have the focus to puzzle it out- said. He followed where she had been staring and grinned. “I see you’ve spotted José.”

“José?” She could only parrot the name, too shocked to turn and look again. Perhaps she’d been mistaken and the man only looked similar to Héctor from a distance. It had been a very long time since she last saw him, after all.

The server nodded. “That’s what we all call him around here, since no one knows his proper name, not even him.”

Imelda couldn’t even parrot this time as she relented and looked again. It was definitely Héctor over there, although she couldn’t recall ever seeing his face so empty. He wasn’t even smiling.

“He comes in here and plays from time to time,” the server continued, oblivious. “Doesn’t bother anyone, and the music’s good, so Tío lets him do it and even pays him a little if sales are up.”

Imelda finally found her voice. “How… Why doesn’t he know his own name?” The Héctor she’d known, or at least thought she’d known, had a ridiculously good memory and was always using it to his advantage.

The server sighed and leaned against the empty chair on the other side of the table. “I couldn’t tell you exactly what caused it, but José doesn’t remember anything from his past, or where he’s from. Whatever happened couldn’t have been pretty, though. A couple of drunks found him, back before I started working for Tío, somewhere around 10 years ago. Someone had tried to bury him in a shallow grave just outside of town. The drunks took him to the hospital, but I guess it took a while before he woke up. And when he did, he couldn’t remember a thing. Not his name, not his age, not even where he grew up.”

Imelda opened her mouth and closed it again. None of what the server was saying made sense.

“Tío says he thinks there must’ve been a fight. He says one of the doctors at the hospital thinks José was poisoned. And José didn’t have any travel papers or identification on him when the drunks found him, but he still had money in his pocket. I heard the police found a suitcase dumped in a ditch, but all the stuff inside was trashed and there was no name on the case.” The server sighed and shook his head. “I just want to know who would get into a fight with José. The man’s harmless.” He sniggered. “Well, unless you mention the song.”

Imelda turned back to the server and made a face. “The song?” This really was all too much to take in at once, and she was almost convinced she’d fallen asleep into a dream except for her aching feet still anchoring her firmly to reality.

The server nodded. “Sí. You know that fellow, Ernesto de la Cruz, who’s been making waves in music?”

Far better than I want to, Imelda thought. It had been Ernesto who had set out on the stupid tour with Héctor, and then returned nearly a year later to tell her she’d been abandoned. She tried to recall when Ernesto said they’d split, and found she couldn’t help but wonder if Ernesto had told her the complete truth. He’d been against her marriage to Héctor from the beginning, after all.

“Well,” the server continued, once again oblivious to Imelda’s inner turmoil. “If you so much as mention de la Cruz’s biggest hit--” he dropped his voice to a whisper “--Remember Me, in José’s hearing, he goes absolutely mad. Old señor Víctor had to hold him back from mauling a musician who dared suggest playing it. Didn’t play it, mind you, just suggested playing, and José went nuts. Señor Víctor’s practically a bear, and he was struggling to hold onto José that night. But, if you don’t mention the song, José’s the gentlest soul you’ll ever meet.”

That, at least, was more in line with the Héctor Imelda remembered.

The sound of Poco Loco continued to drift about the restaurant, and Imelda couldn’t decide if she wanted to scream or cry. “Nearly 10 years and he hasn’t been able to remember anything?” she finally asked. She did her best to keep her voice even.

The server shrugged, looking at her uneasily. “Nothing specific,” he said carefully. “Occasionally he’ll say or do something to make you think he almost had a memory, but then it’ll be gone before he can latch onto it. There’s definitely something there, but it’s almost like-- like he’d stuck on the other side of the door. A few vague ideas get through, his issue with the song, for one. He’ll drink anything you put in front of him, unless it’s tequíla. Put tequíla in front of him and he starts getting all antsy and saying he needs to go home. I asked where home was once, thought he might’ve remembered something. I swear he looked like he was about to cry, then he just kept saying he didn’t know, over and over, until he left for the night.”

Imelda felt some small part of her heart that she’d been ignoring for years clench in her chest. “That sounds terrible,” she managed. She tried to imagine what it would be like, if she somehow forgot home, forgot Coco, except for the faintest ideas. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

The server nodded. “Tio and I didn’t see him again for three days. He came back covered in dirt. Apparently, he went out to the place the drunks found him and partially buried himself to try and bring back memories. It didn’t work. Tio let him clean up in the guest room upstairs, and made him stay here a few days to recover. I got yelled at for getting him into that state to begin with.”

“Ay! Diego! Stop pestering the lady,” the bartender, who’d come out from behind the bar, called.

Diego grinned and stood up straight, nodding to Imelda. “Perdón again, señora, for chatting your ear off. It’s been a while since we’ve had a new-comer so sympathetic to José’s plight.” He pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to her.

Imelda looked at him, confused.

“You’re weeping, señora,” Diego told her gently. He placed the kerchief on the table and walked away.

Imelda sat, unmoving, for a long minute, until the last notes of Poco Loco faded away and a new song started. Slowly, she raised a hand to her face and wiped half-heartedly at the tears that were indeed flowing down her cheeks. It’s shock, she thought, feeling oddly detached from her body. Shock was the only explanation she could think of for why she was still in her seat and not half-way back to the inn. Shock, and the fact she hadn’t paid yet. She’d been too distracted to pay before Diego walked away. Shaking herself, she grabbed her glass of water and took a gulp, trying to shift her brain back into motion but only succeeding in sending herself into a coughing fit when the last of it went down wrong. She fished her own kerchief out of her pocket and pressed it to her mouth to muffle the coughs and try to curb the tears now streaming down her face as she fought to breathe.

When she could breathe again, and had wiped her face clean, she stared down at her plate. She felt… empty. She’d always assumed her rage would be explosive if she ever saw Héctor again. And she’d certainly been furious when she first spotted him, ready to march out of the restaurant without even acknowledging his presence. But now…

It was as though listening to Diego’s tale had drained the rage right out of her. She couldn’t say she was happy, per se, or even sad. More than anything, she was confused. And hungry, her growling stomach reminded her. The food she’d ordered smelled delicious, and she wasn’t in the habit of letting good food go to waste. Besides, leaving without eating would gain her exactly the attention she would rather avoid. With that thought in mind, Imelda made herself begin to eat.

The food was undoubtedly good, but she barely tasted it. It felt like such a strange thing, that she’d banned music for so long and yet it quickly faded to the back of her awareness. If she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend she was at a bar back home a decade prior, waiting for Héctor to finish for the evening so they could return to their little house together.

Perhaps it was because, for the first time in a very long time, the songs were being played as she’d known them - no gaudy embellishments or implied wink and nudge from the musician. Just a simple, sincere guitar. Although Héctor wasn’t singing along, which was a bit odd, but she could only puzzle out one thing at a time.

Héctor’s letters had stopped five months or so after he left. At first she’d thought he’d absentmindedly forgotten to send the next letter, which happened on occasion. Then she’d guessed it had been lost in the mail, it wouldn’t have been the first time. But when one, and then two months passed with no word, she started to worry that something had happened. If she’d been on her own, she would have gone searching for him. But Coco had been not-quite four, and needed food and a roof over her head, so Imelda had stayed put and started to learn how to make shoes.

It had been another five months before she ran into Ernesto in the plaza and demanded to know where her husband was.

Ernesto had handed her a letter and Héctor’s wedding ring, said they’d been left behind when he and Héctor split several months prior, and left her standing there gaping in the middle of the plaza. All he’d told her about Héctor’s whereabouts was that he’d headed north to try and make a name for himself. He’d vanished into the crowd before she could ask anything else and hadn’t reappeared in Santa Cecilia since.

In the present, Imelda allowed herself another glance in Héctor’s direction.

His hair was even more unkempt than usual, and peppered with gray. Prematurely, she mused, as he was a year younger than her and only 31. He looked darker than she remembered, as though he’d somehow managed to find a way to stay out under the sun even more than he had in their youth. A multitude of lines and creases stretched across his face, and his eyes… Imelda had to close her own eyes and look away.

His eyes were the same warm brown they’d always been, but they seemed unnaturally empty of life. As though Héctor were no more than an oversized puppet.

His clothes -from what she had seen, she couldn’t look at those eyes again just yet- were starting to fray. He wasn’t wearing the suit she’d made him. Rather, a plain shirt and trousers that were too short for him, with a jacket that was starting to come apart at the shoulders. And he’d worn a hole through the side of his left shoe. He certainly didn’t look like a man who’d set out to find his fortune.

She couldn’t help but wonder at the timeline she was presented with. Between what Ernesto had told her years ago, and Diego’s account just now, it couldn’t have been more than a couple months from Héctor and Ernesto splitting to Héctor being found in a grave. But why he’d been back in the city so soon, when Ernesto had been so insistent that he’d traveled north, was something she couldn’t puzzle out.

And then there was Diego’s account of Héctor’s reaction to Remember Me. Ironically, perhaps, it was the only song of his she hadn’t heard before he left. She’d only ever caught snatches of the song from Coco’s room after her daughter was in bed. Ernesto had claimed that Héctor sold him his guitar and songs before heading north. If Coco knew Remember Me, then it was undoubtedly written by Héctor, not Ernesto, but why would that matter if the song had been sold?

On the other side of the restaurant, Héctor hit a sour note, and stopped in the middle of his song to glare at the offending string.

Imelda snorted as she watched. The guitar she’d given him was rarely out of tune. He likely wouldn’t have any issues now if he hadn’t sold it.

She froze with her fork half-way to her mouth, suddenly wishing she could slap herself for not thinking of that sooner.

If Héctor had gone north to seek fame, why had he sold Ernesto the guitar and all of his songs? Surely he would have needed songs to play, and something to play them on? Even if he decided the memories associated with the guitar were too much, he would have to be a fool to sell it without getting a replacement, doubly so to sell all his songs when he was just starting out. She could understand, on a practical level, selling the songs connected to her, to Coco, if he truly wanted to leave them behind. But that still left at least half his repertoire, full of songs she knew would have easily caught on with the right crowd- had caught on with Ernesto playing them.

The dinner she’d just eaten settled like a stone in her gut. Héctor’s letters had grown shorter the longer he was on the road, true, but the cutoff had been abrupt. There’d been mentions of fights with Ernesto, though he never went into detail. The early letters were often accompanied by songs and poems, but the last several had lacked those. Imelda swallowed uncomfortably and glanced at Héctor yet again- now back to playing, having fixed the issue with his strings. Something didn’t add up right, but the only one present who could tell her more didn’t remember enough to explain.

“Oh dear.” Diego was back, gesturing nervously at her plate. “Is something wrong with your dinner, señora?”

Imelda forced a smile on her face. “No. I’m afraid I just recalled something I really would rather have not remembered. The food was delicious.” Even so, she couldn’t make herself eat another bite.

Diego grinned, apparently reassured. “I see. I shall hope that you forget again very soon.” he glanced toward Héctor and his grin grew. “You’re in for a treat, señora. He hasn’t wandered off yet, and it’s nearly eight o’clock.”

Imelda felt as though she’d somehow missed part of the conversation. Then again, that seemed to be happening a lot this evening. “What happens at eight?”

Diego winked at her. “You’ll have to wait and see.” he wandered off again.

Imelda slumped in her seat, leaning her head in her hands and rubbing her temples. She really didn’t need more puzzles right now. The restaurant, she noticed, was growing quieter. The clink of dishes and bottles fading as other patrons turned toward Héctor’s corner. In the distance, she heard a bell begin to toll the hour.

Héctor stopped in the middle of his song, his eyes somehow more lively and more distant than before.

Imelda found herself leaning forward as the audience seemed to hold their collective breath.

Héctor closed his eyes and began to play. The opening notes were soft and gentle, not unlike the beginning of the song he’d written to propose to Imelda, although not that exact song either. Then he began to sing. “Remember me, though I have to say goodbye. Remember me, don’t let it make you cry…”

It was the same song Diego had said drove Héctor to fury, but not played the way Ernesto played it. The simple notes and gentle words reminded Imelda more of- of Coco, and the song she still sang to herself each night before bed.

“My song!” Coco had cried as a little girl, when Imelda tried to make her stop singing each night. “Papá said it’s my song!”

Hearing music, any music, tore at Imelda’s heart by then, but the anger and fear on her daughter’s face when told she had to stop was even worse. Imelda hadn’t slept that night, merely cried in her room until dawn and cursed Héctor for leaving. She hadn’t told Coco to stop again. Instead, she’d pretended not to hear the little voice each night. Coco, for her part, had confined her singing to that one song, sung quietly, alone in her room from then on. She almost always sang it at the same time.

Across the room, Héctor had opened his eyes to stare at a spot on the floor that looked no different from the rest. Except that, if Imelda thought back, it was roughly the same place Coco’s bed would have been were he back home singing her to sleep. She surely would have sung alone.

“...Know that I’m with you the only way that I can be.” Héctor’s voice caught on the words. “Until you’re in my arms again, remember me.” His eyes closed once more as the final notes faded into a silence that hung in the air. A moment later, he blinked, shook himself, and returned to his earlier playing. The restaurant patrons similarly returned to their conversations.

Imelda sat at her table, feeling a bit underwhelmed by the lack of response for Héctor’s performance. It felt like such a momentous thing -that he would sing a duet with his daughter, despite the distance between them and the fact that he supposedly had no memory of her- that surely deserved a round of applause at the very least. And yet, looking around the restaurant, it was as if the performance had never happened at all. Feeling more than a little light-headed, Imelda gathered up her glass and mostly cleaned plate, and made her way to the bar to pay.

“Was everything to your satisfaction?” the bartender asked.

Imelda nodded. “It was very good, thank you.” She handed over a fistfull of bills and coins, and waited for him to count out her change. While she waited, she glanced at Héctor. He still hadn’t noticed her. “Does he play here often?” she asked, nodding in Héctor’s direction.

The bartender sighed. “Often enough.” He handed over her change. “I used to figure he’d disappear one day. Thought it would mean he finally remembered where his home was, or someone came and found him. But after this many years, I’m not sure anymore that’ll happen. He’s a nice fellow, mild-mannered and all. Brings in extra business when he’s here.”

“Does-” Imelda paused, not quite certain she should ask “-does he play that song most nights?”

The bartender fixed her with a hard look. “Sí, he does. Try not to get any ideas, though.”

Imelda blinked at him, confused. Between him and Diego, confusing her was turning into a family trait.

He must have realized she didn’t know what he was talking about, because he continued. “We’ve had mariachi come through before who took his playing as an invitation to join in. Or they question him about it after the fact. He always ends up angry or confused. I know Diego thinks it’s sweet that he sings the same song every night, I can barely stand to hear it myself.” He sighed again, fixing his gaze on Héctor. “That man’s trapped in his own mind, and nothing any of us have done has helped. That song, that’s the closest he gets to breaking out. Hearing it each night is like hearing a cry for help you can’t answer.” Another patron at the bar waved for his attention. “Perdón, señora. Enjoy your evening.” Then he was gone, leaving Imelda with her thoughts.

She looked at Héctor one last time, still playing his guitar, and left the restaurant. She needed time to think, to try and sort out the truth from the lies, and the fresh air would help clear her mind. Or so she hoped.

Héctor’s music followed her back to the inn, continuing uninvited in her head long after she was out of hearing range. She doubted she’d get much rest. But then, she hadn’t slept much after he disappeared, either. Perhaps it was fitting that she stay up half the night after seeing him again. She dressed for sleep, put out the light, and lay in the bed staring at the ceiling. And she thought, and thought, and thought some more.

And when the dawn finally broke, she realized she had neither slept, nor puzzled out the answers to her questions.

Her husband had left on his trip 10 years ago, writing almost daily. His letters had grown shorter and less energetic as time went by, before cutting off abruptly several months into the tour. Some months later, nearly a year after leaving, his friend and partner, Ernesto, had returned to tell her she’d been abandoned. And somewhere in there, a group of drunks had found Héctor buried in a shallow grave on the brink of death.

Try as she might, Imelda couldn’t make all the pieces line up and fit together properly, there were simply too many gaps.

Ernesto might be able to fill in those gaps, were she to track him down and convince him to answer her questions. But that would take longer than she wanted, and she doubted he would answer her willingly, or truthfully. She’d known he was a liar when they were young, twisting or exaggerating tales so that they worked in his favor. Looking back, that was something she should have remembered that day in the plaza. And besides his lying nature, the gaps in the story were forming too easily into a theory she didn’t dare acknowledge just yet, but which she knew could take the man from hateful to dangerous.

No, Ernesto would not do for a source of answers, so she would have to look to Héctor. The bartender had said that attempts had been made to bring Héctor’s memories back, but nothing had worked. Then again, none of them had known Héctor before the memory loss; Imelda had grown up with him. She’d married him, lived with him, had a child with him. If she couldn’t spark his memories; well, that wasn’t worth dwelling on, she told herself as she dressed for the day. She would deal with that problem if it arose.

The city streets weren’t empty when she left her room in the inn, although they were far less crowded than they had been the day before.

Imelda kept her head high and her steps sure as she made her way back toward La Caléndula. The bartender would likely have questions for her before he would be willing to tell her where she might find Héctor. But she would swallow her pride and answer them truthfully, otherwise she didn’t know where she should even begin. When the bar came into view, however, she realized she wouldn’t need to ask.

Héctor sat on the step leading onto the porch of the restaurant, head tipped forward, and wearing a ratty straw hat that covered his face such that she couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep. His battered guitar was on the ground next to him, the neck tipped against his knees and held loosely in one hand. He looked like he had been sitting there all night. The restaurant door opened, and Imelda found herself ducking into a deep doorway. She wasn’t sure she wanted a witness to her potential failure.

Diego stepped out onto the porch, covering a yawn and holding a bucket and rag with one hand. He gently nudged Héctor, then walked to the windows and began wiping them down.

Imelda watched as Héctor stirred, reaching his arms above his head and stretching in a way she knew made his spine pop. He’d startled her doing that the first morning after their wedding, but it had become endearingly familiar over time. She waited a few more minutes, watching Diego try to strike up a conversation and Héctor murmuring half-replies while she debated whether or not to come back later. She could always stop in at the tanner’s first, to see if that shipment of leather had arrived yet, and come back once Diego was gone and Héctor was alone once more. Except she couldn’t be sure Héctor wouldn’t leave before she returned.

Taking a deep breath, she paused -to see that her braids were still properly in place and not because she was scared- and stepped from the doorway.

“Buenos días, señora,” Diego called when she drew near.

Imelda didn’t answer him, her eyes locked on Héctor. He looked up, and she felt her heart race in her chest. Her breath seemed caught in her throat, and her stomach was doing all sorts of interesting acrobatics. She felt, rather absurdly, like she had when she told him she was pregnant with Coco- as though her world had tipped on its axis and she hadn’t quite righted herself yet.

She hadn’t actually planned this far ahead. She’d been so preoccupied with looking for him that she hadn’t realized until now that she had no idea what to say. She swallowed, but her mouth remained dry.

Héctor hadn’t looked away.

Imelda took a breath. “Héctor-” her voice came out like a squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Héctor-” that was better, and she had his attention now “-do you know who I am?”

His face remained blank, and for a long, terrifying moment, she was afraid it wouldn’t work, that his memories were too far gone to ever recall. Then, almost painfully slowly, his expression changed. He scrunched his brows together and pursed his mouth the same way he had so many times before when trying to pull a song into being. And his eyes never left her face.

Imelda stayed standing before him with her hands clasped at her waist, vaguely aware of Diego calling for his tío. Her palms were sweaty, and she was gripping her hands so tightly she knew without looking her knuckles had gone white. But she didn’t dare move, she almost didn’t dare blink.

Héctor shifted on the step, knocking his hat off when he tangled his fingers in his hair and pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. The look on his face was quickly giving way from confusion to a combination of distress and pain; and Imelda was suddenly afraid she might have sent him into a state of panic if his memories failed to return.

“Hush,” she tried to comfort him, cautiously kneeling down and reaching to cover his hands with her own. “It’s okay. Take your time.”

The backs of his hands were dry against her sweaty palms, and quite warm. And his hair felt more brittle than she remembered.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and swayed back and forth, the world around them forgotten as his inner battle played across his face. Imelda rubbed gentle circles against his wrists, racking her brain for some way to calm him down. She’d grown quite skilled at handling crises in the past decade, raising her daughter as a single parent. But this wasn’t the sort of crisis she’d ever had to face before. Slowly, she became aware of Héctor humming to himself, a nervous, breathy sound that she soon recognized. The song he’d written to propose to her. It was quieter, more serious that Poco Loco, and undeniably hers. She didn’t recall him playing it the night before. Her voice was rusty as she joined him, humming instead of singing because the hurt she’d felt since he left was still there. She’d sworn off music when Ernesto told her she was abandoned, leaving it all for Héctor if he loved it so much more than her. But if it was the way to bring him back, then she could make an exception.

They reached the end of the song and started over from the beginning, Héctor’s voice growing stronger, and Imelda more sure of the notes. She leaned her forehead against his and closed her eyes, focusing only on the sound of their voices blending together, sometimes the same, sometimes harmonizing.

“Imelda.”

His voice was so soft she almost didn’t realize he’d spoken. She drew back and opened her eyes.

Héctor was looking at her again with a fragile sort of hope in his eyes. “Imelda?” he said, his voice louder but shaking.

“Shh, I’m here,” she whispered, brushing away a tear that had begun to form in the corner of his eye. “I’m here.”

“Imelda,” he said again, this time sounding more sure of himself. He broke into a grin murmuring her name over and over. “Imelda, you’re Imelda. I remember. Imelda, I remember-” The words died in his throat, his happy grin sinking into a wide-eyed horror. “I forgot, Imelda,” he gasped. “I forgot you! How- I forgot Coco!” His voice broke on their daughter’s name. “No- How- I forgot!”

He’d begun to tremble, and all Imelda could think to do was pull him towards her. He came easily, practically collapsing into her arms as he continued to babble. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry! I promised to be home in six months and I forgot! I-I was planning to come home. I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

Imelda was caught in an awkward half-crouch while he clung to her, but she pushed the discomfort aside and brought one hand up to cradle his head, and gently ran the other up and down his spine. His face was buried against her shoulder, her dress growing wet with tears. He was still shaking, too, and he felt much too thin now that she was holding him. “Shh,” she murmured again, stroking his hair. “Shh. I’m here. It’s going to be alright.”

It was, perhaps, a foolish promise. There were still so many questions to be asked. Diego and the bartender were both standing a short distance away with matching expressions of concern, and she was sure they would want to know why it had taken so long for her to find Héctor, and why she hadn’t gone to him the night before. There would be letters to write to Coco and the twins. Letters saying who she had found, and explaining that she would be delayed coming home. She had no intention to leave Mexico City until she understood what had happened to Héctor to lock his memories away for so long.

But her most burning question had been answered. He’d wanted to come home. He’d planned to come home, and been prevented. Coco was right; he’d never abandoned them. It was enough, for now, to build on. She couldn’t say exactly what would happen in the long run. If they’d ever be able to return to even a semblance of what had been, or if their relationship would be forever broken. But they could worry about that later.

“I’m sorry,” Héctor whispered again. “I’m sorry for forgetting.”

Imelda hugged him tighter. “You’ve remembered now,” she countered.

“Sí,” Héctor agreed after a long silence. “I remember.”

[kuroopaisen]

rascal. (bokuto koutarou)

➵  maybe pirates aren’t so bad, after all. 

wc: 5.6k

warnings: f!reader, copious amounts of fluff, tomfoolery 

a/n: rachel darling i remember you were the one to request pirates, so here it is!  you’re an absolute sweetheart, and thank you for always popping into my inbox and being as lovely as you are! i hope you enjoy this! ren and remy, thank you so much for your help on this fic! 

Inheriting your aunt’s tavern wasn’t exactly a blessing.

If anything, you planned to sell it off after a year or two. You were only going to work it for a year out of respect – it was giving you the opportunity to secure some sense of financial freedom, after all.

Not that it was the act of running a tavern that you were uncomfortable with. Not at all – you’d never had access to this much money before, and it was less gruelling work than that of the farm.

And it helped you stave off getting married for a few years – thank the gods.

The issue was one of reputation. Your aunt’s – no, your tavern – was known for playing host to patrons with less than sterling character. It was known for servicing ‘unscrupulous fellows,’ as your father had grumbled. In that very same breath, he’d told you that you had to take it – the money was too good to pass up.

So, you’d moved to this bustling port city, intent on making at least something during your first few months. You’d hoped that the reputation of your patrons was all hearsay; rumours spread by competitors, or maybe gullible travellers.

Unfortunately, your father was right.

Pirates. Pirates, everywhere. How your aunt had built up a client base composed primarily of these seaborne rogues, you weren’t sure.

But you were wise enough to keep your opinions to yourself. These men would be lining your pockets for the foreseeable future, after all.

Had you been scared, at first? Yes! Absolutely terrified! But you had to accustom yourself to it – and fast.  

You even knew a few by name; regulars who always seemed to come in at least twice a month or so. Some came weekly, which always made you doubt just how much seafaring they actually did.

Some even brought you spoils from their ‘travels’. Goods like wheat and barley, mostly – stuff that you were wise enough to turn a blind eye to. Most of the time, you would just donate such things to the local orphanage. They had better use for such things, anyway.

You were sure that a few of them, blinded by their drunken haze, couldn’t actually tell the difference between you and your aunt. But it was no matter; whoever your aunt was, she was tough as nails. That wasn’t a surprise, though. She had left this place simply because she wanted to go travelling around the world. You wondered, more than once, if she’d actually run off with a pirate.

There was a certain group of regulars that confused you, though. Admittedly, you were quite fond of them, but you had no idea if they were pirates, or just some old chums. They always came in at least once a week, and they were never short on gold.

But they treated you well, and always made a habit of hanging around the bar.

Their leader was striking, a tall, muscular man with a pair of sparkling golden eyes and the world’s brightest smile. He certainly had the look of a pirate – that typical white shirt that revealed a little more of his chest than maybe it should, the sun-kissed skin, the sword slung around his waist.

But his personality only half fit the bill. Loud, gregarious, bold – but sensitive, childish, naïve.

And yet despite all that, you could tell that he was in charge. Things always seemed to come back to him, no matter what. Even if his stunning black-haired friend – likely the first mate, if they really were pirates – seemed to call most of the shots.

Not that it mattered, in the end. They paid up, and that was enough.

“So, what do you think of pirates?” This leader, who you’d surmised was called ‘Bokuto’, asked, tilting his head to the side. He looked a little like a bird.

A ripple of exasperation ran through his friends.  

You laughed. “Why do you ask?”

“Rumour is they’re your main clientele.” Another one of the men – possibly called Konoha, if you remembered correctly – smirked at you from over his flagon.

“Ah,” you smiled, propping your elbows on the bar and resting your chin on folded hands. “It’s hard to tell these days.” You’d play the game, if you must.

“Huh?” The lot of them frowned at you; were they offended, maybe?

“I like my pirates traditional, see,” you sighed, adding a touch more exasperation than necessary. “You know; eyepatches, big feathery hats, peg legs… but nobody who comes through those doors looks the part.”

Konoha and some of the other men snorted, but Bokuto perked up.

“Wouldn’t pirates be bad for business?” Konoha raised an eyebrow at you. “Driving off other clients, and all that?”

You shrugged, biting your cheek. “What use is respectable clientele if they’re not willing to pay for an entire barrel of ale?”

Some of them laughed at that. What a relief; it meant they weren’t paying attention to the discomfort behind those words.

“I just wish they looked like pirates.” You shook your head, standing up to full height again. “If you’re going to be a pirate, you may as well dress like they do in all those romantic tales.”

“So you’re upset that they’re not meeting your personal tastes?” Konoha chuckled. “Isn’t it bad to ogle your clientele?”

“Well, they see no problem with ogling me, so I think it’s only fair,” you shrugged, waving a hand at him. You barely felt the sentiment, but you weren’t about to be vulnerable in front of a pirate.

A small racket erupted from the lot of them, a cacophony of responses that ranged from concern to amusement. You took the opportunity to turn away from them, a serene smile masking your face.

You liked those boys. You really did.

But it certainly felt remiss to befriend a group of pirates. Even if they did pay your bills.

✧ ✧

“Is he okay?” You asked, handing Akaashi two flagons.

“Hm?” Akaashi blinked, a small frown touching at the corners of his mouth.

“Your captain.” You nodded in the direction of the man in question. He was sitting on the other side of the tavern, very conspicuously not looking at you. That in itself was abnormal. But what really made it weird was the eyepatch. And the pointed leather hat adorned with an obnoxiously big feather. Those were both new additions to his get up.

“Oh,” Akaashi sighed, placing the flagons on the bar. “He’s fine.”

“But… his eye…”

“He’s still got both of them, don’t worry,” Akaashi said, shaking his head. “He thought he needed to change up his image.”

“Change up… his image?”

“He wanted to look more fearsome,” Akaashi deadpanned, his eyes flicking down. “More like a true pirate.”

You giggled at the thought. “So, you’re really pirates, then?”

“You already knew that,” Akaashi smiled softly.

He was the cleverest one, that was for sure.

Your eyes found their way back to Bokuto. He seemed to be struggling with his new costume, constantly readjusting the eyepatch and pushing the tip of the hat back up so it wouldn’t obstruct his vision. Occasionally, he would screw up his nose a bit. Not really the look of a fearsome pirate captain.

“I see he hasn’t sawed his leg off, though.” You bit back a smile.

Akaashi chuckled at that. “No, he’s not unreasonable enough for that.” He raised an eyebrow at you before turning to look at his captain. “He did some asking around. Got a good scope of all those romantic pirate stories you were talking about.”

“Really?” You scoffed. If this was his attempt to woo you, it surely was the most creative yet.

“Well, tell him that I don’t like my pirates reticent,” you smiled, winking at Akaashi. “I much prefer it when they talk to me.”

Akaashi laughed quietly, shaking his head. “Will do.”   

Within five minutes, Bokuto was back at your bar, the eyepatch replaced by his typical brilliant smile. The hat remained a part of the ensemble, but you didn’t mind. You were quick to assure him that you preferred it that way.

✧ ✧

“Bokuto.”

“Yeah?”

“This is a terrible idea.”

“It’ll be fine!” Bokuto beamed at his first mate, scratching the underbelly of the parrot sitting on his shoulder. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you Birdmeat?”

The name ‘Birdmeat’ had come from the suggestion that Bokuto should name his parrot after his favourite food. He was the only one who failed to see the issue with it. 

“I fail to see how a parrot is supposed to impress a woman,” Akaashi muttered.

“It’ll impress her because he can speak, duh,” Bokuto scoffed, as if he’d just said the most reasonable thing in the world. “Isn’t that right, boy?”

“Idiot!” The bird squawked, flapping its wings. “Idiot!”

Bokuto’s face fell. But for once, he let it slide. “Just you wait, Akaashi,” he beamed, pointing a finger at his first mate. “This will impress her.”

It did not, in fact, impress you.

“What if it shits?” You grimaced, gazing at the gaudily coloured bird with an expression that could only be described as thinly-veiled contempt.

“It… won’t.”

“It will.”

“Akaashi—”

He just shot Bokuto a look that said, ‘I told you so.’ The fact that it was empty of any malice or self-righteousness just made it more infuriating.

“I’d be… willing to let it slide if it was… restrained, somehow,” you said carefully, your mind running through all the possible ways this could go wrong.

It was just a bird. It couldn’t cause too much mayhem.

But, it belonged to Bokuto. The human manifestation of havoc.

And that made you nervous.

Bokuto nodded vigorously, turning to Akaashi. “We can manage that, right?”  

“Uh.” Akaashi looked at you. There was something about his eyes that made it seem like he was apologising. “Do you have any rope?”

Five minutes and a lot of squawking later, and the parrot had a tenuous rope wrapped around it’s belly like a harness. You’d felt too bad about tying its wings or legs up, so you’d made Bokuto swear to not let go of the rope. He’d been resolute, promising that he’d be very mindful of his little companion.

Finally, it seemed, you could get back to business.

“One spiced mead, please!” Bokuto beamed, hands on his hips in some sort of pose.

You swallowed down a sigh. You’d be damned if this man wasn’t entertaining – perhaps even charming, in his own way – but by the gods did he give off the impression of a disaster waiting to happen.

Just go about your business, you thought to yourself. It’s fine, Bokuto’s got a grip on the rope. It’ll be fine.

“Here,” you sighed, placing the flagon on the bar in front of him.

In his enthusiasm, Bokuto used two hands to pick it up. 

Two. Meaning one wasn’t holding the rope.

And Birdmeat knew.

Even Akaashi wasn’t fast enough.

It sprung off Bokuto’s shoulder, landing in his flagon with an undignified splash.

Bokuto shrieked, swatting at the parrot with one hand. Akaashi had dove head-first at the ground, missing the rope by a mere margin.

“Bokuto!” He yelled.

Bokuto flinched, realising a moment too late that he’d let go of the damn bird.

Birdmeat shot straight up, its wings flapping at full speed.

You should’ve trusted your instincts.

Chaos erupted.

“Akaashi!” Bokuto shrieked, flailing his hat in the air.

The man in question looked like he had just left this mortal plane. You had half a mind to join him.

The bird was still flapping around the tavern, squawking at the top of its little lungs.

The rest of Bokuto’s crew was on their feet, staring at the bird with some sense of dumbfounded resignation. A normal day for them, you supposed.

“That fuckin’ bird just shat in my ale!”

Oh no. Oh no.

Laughter erupted from one end of the tavern – likely that poor sod’s friends. But you didn’t have time to worry about that. You’d just give him a free drink or two later. Your main concern was stopping that little fucker from doing anything worse.

The last thing you wanted to do was try and calm a pirate who had bird shit running down his forehead.

How were you even supposed to catch a bird? Did you have a net?

Your other patrons had noticed by now, their expressions ranging from amusement to annoyance to anger. Multiple voices were crying out, but you couldn’t quite tell what any of them were saying. All you could do was watch the parrot fly higher and higher, the short leash of rope rising well out of reach.

The bird clattered onto one of the rafters, its claws skittering across the wood. You’d never get those scratches out.

“Idiot!” It squawked. “Idiot!”

You could’ve sworn it was looking at Bokuto.

“Do you have a plan?” You hissed, head whipping round to him.

Bokuto glanced at you sheepishly, his cheeks red as anything. “Maybe?”

Why did that make you feel worse?

“Akaashi…”

“Please don’t tell me…”

“It’s the only way…”

You looked between the two of them, frowning. “What? What are you planning?”

“Trust me,” Akaashi sighed. “You won’t like it.”

You didn’t.

Bokuto’s ‘plan’ was to prop Akaashi on his shoulders, hoping that would be high enough to reach that damn parrot’s leash. And admittedly, that wasn’t the worst plan. But this was Bokuto. Anything could go wrong.

Poor Akaashi looked like he knew that quite well. 

You watched in horror as he stood himself on one of your stools, giving you an apologetic nod in the process. You stared at him, dumbfounded. Bokuto dashed forward, turning around so his back was facing his precariously balanced friend. 

“Be careful,” Akaashi mumbled, swinging his legs over Bokuto’s awaiting shoulders. 

Bokuto nodded with a grunt, clamping his hands over Akaashi’s knees as if to stabilise him. It certainly didn’t make you feel any more at ease. 

This was a disaster waiting to happen. You just knew you were about to watch someone split their head open on the floor of your tavern. 

The lumbering form of Akaashi-plus-Bokuto ambled towards Birdmeat, each wobbly step taken with great purpose. 

You watched, rapt with horror as they inched closer to their target, one of Akaashi’s hands outstretched and the other planted on the top of Bokuto’s head. 

Birdmeat cocked his head.

Akaashi leant forward, swiping at the air. He grabbed the rope, giving it a careful tug. Birdmeat flapped its wings, scrambling as it fell backwards off the scaffolding. 

One more yank and it was against Akaashi’s chest, caged in by his arms. 

A confused cheer rippled through his crewmates as they crowded around him. 

You frowned as you watched them squabble amongst themselves for a bit, fingers pointing and voices raised as they disagreed over who should have to deal with the bird. 

A hush set upon the tavern, each and every pair of eyes turned to the small gaggle of men bickering amongst themselves. You were sure that your patrons were just as worried as you were that they’d accidentally let it go in the midst of their bickering. 

You weren’t about to let that happen.  

“Get that damn thing out of here,” you grumbled, pointing at the door. A few more moments of bickering, and the bird had safely traded hands. One of the men, a shorter fellow you’d come to know as ‘Komi’ nodded, scampering out the door with the parrot safely clasped between his hands.

“I’m so sorry,” Bokuto mumbled, drawing his knees up to his chest.

This was their captain? This big, muscular behemoth of a man who was sitting on your tavern floor, curled up in a ball?

What kind of pirate crew was this?

“It’s… okay,” you sighed, pressing two fingers to your eyes. “Nobody got hurt, so…”

Bokuto braved a look at you, his golden eyes round and pitiful. Hell, even his hair seemed like it had deflated. How was that even possible?

“We’ll help you clean up,” Akaashi said, giving you a quick bow. “I deeply apologise for the commotion.”

You waved your hands at him, overwhelmed by the sudden formality. “No, no, it’s fine!”

Maybe you should’ve been angrier. Maybe you should’ve been more upset. But something about this was just… delightfully absurd. Nobody but Bokuto would’ve thought that this was a good idea. And it was nice to have some excitement that didn’t involve cutlasses for once.

“Just… just help me clean up, okay?” You sighed, running a hand through your hair. “Then we’ll call it even.”

A week later, a poster took pride of place above the bar. It read, in big, bold lettering: “ABSOLUTELY NO PARROTS, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. EVER.”

Akaashi had made it himself.

✧ ✧

Bokuto liked to think of himself as a well-mannered man despite his disreputable occupation.

He’d even tried to get Akaashi to market them better; something along the lines of ‘debonair,’ the whole ‘criminals, but with a conscience’ shtick. Akaashi had refused, calling it a waste of time – they were pirates after all, and regardless of how moral their conduct was, they were going to have a bad reputation.

But that didn’t stop Bokuto from trying his very best to be a rogue with a heart of gold.

And he was currently debating whether or not punching an asshole in the face challenged or reinforced that identity.  

“Akaashi—”

“Don’t do it.”

“I haven’t even said anything yet!” Bokuto whined, pouting at his second-in-command.

“She’ll be mad at you if you start a fight,” Akaashi murmured, taking a sip of his ale.

Bokuto huffed, head whipping around to look at you again.

To anyone else, you looked unbothered; smiling like you usually did, laughing at each poor joke directed your way. But Bokuto could tell that something was off. That you were uncomfortable. And he didn’t like that one bit.

He’d been watching long enough to identify the source of your discomfort.

Some dude that he’d only seen a handful of times, but had seen enough to know that he distinctly didn’t like his aura.

“Akaashi, I’m gonna do it.”

“Don’t do it.”

“But he’s making her uncomfortable,” Bokuto whined, looking between Akaashi and the bar with a certain hint of desperation.

“Maybe you should ask her about it before doing anything brash,” Akaashi sighed, rubbing one of his temples with two fingers. “Walking up to some dude and punching him in the face isn’t a good way of impressing your crush.”

“I don’t have a crush!”

“Sure you don’t, Bokuto,” Akaashi said, taking another sip from his mug.

“Psst!”

You raised an eyebrow at him. Was he trying to be subtle? Because leaning the entire top half of his body over the bar wasn’t exactly understated. 

“Yes?”

“If I started a fight with that dude, would you get mad at me?”

What? Your eyebrows shot up in shock, eyes growing wide. “Bokuto, what the fuck?”

“Not, like, a proper fight,” he mumbled, pouting. “Just, like… a warning.”

“A warning?” Why did he think that sounded any better?

“Like a territorial thing!”

You blinked. “Bokuto, what are you talking about?”

“Well, like… if he feels unwelcome here, he’s not gonna keep bothering you, right?” Bokuto asked, tilting his head at you. He always looked like a little owl when he did that, eyes big and round and far more innocent than they should be. Wasn’t he a pirate captain?

But there was something charming about his simple logic. And something touching about the fact he was this concerned.  

“Look,” you sighed, reaching over and taking his hand. You didn’t miss how his entire face bloomed red, right up to his ears. “I appreciate the thought, but I’ll be okay.”

A thought crossed your mind. A foolish thought, really. But one you didn’t abhor.

You leant forward and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

Bokuto looked like he’d ascended. His golden eyes were wider than you’d ever seen them, his mouth forming a tiny ‘o’ as he gaped at you.

You giggled, giving his hand a squeeze before letting it go. “I’ve got a sword out back anyway.”

Those words yanked Bokuto back down to earth. 

“Wait, really?” For some reason, he couldn’t quite comprehend it. But the thought of you wielding a sword made him… feel things he was rather ashamed of.

You giggled, picking up a flagon and turning to one of the barrels lined up against the wall.

“I know how to use it, too.” You shot him a wink. “My father thought that’d be a pertinent skill for me to learn, seeing as I was moving all the way out here.”

“Right.” Bokuto nodded, almost a little too vigorously. “Right.”

“Enjoy the rest of your night,” you smiled, handing him the flagon. Spiced mead. His favourite.

You had to take his hand and wrap it around the handle, shocked and flustered as he was.

“Off you go,” you tutted, waving him towards his friends.

Somehow, he managed to walk all that way without tripping.

“Oh come on,” Konaha groaned, rolling his eyes.

Bokuto wasn’t looking at them. He couldn’t, really. All he could think about was you – about how pretty you were, how soft your lips had felt against his cheek, how you smelt like whiskey and cinnamon and freshly baked bread.

Gods, having a crush was hard.

✧ ✧

“Do you… like it?” Bokuto stood on the other side of the bar, cheeks flushed and hair dishevelled with intoxication.

You’d faced many things in your time as a tavern wench. You’d believed that it meant you’d be ready to face any kind of situation, no matter how bizarre or off-beat or unsettling it might be.

That was naïve of you.

Because as you stood in front of Bokuto, very expensive-looking necklace in hand, you didn’t know what to say.

 “I…”

The necklace really was beautiful. It looked like a sapphire of some kind; a rich blue gem grafted into an oval. The faintest of glows emanated from it, adding an air of ethereal dignity that you didn’t quite know how to comprehend.

You were uncomfortably aware of your surroundings. Of the dingy walls, the rafters that definitely needed a touch-up or two, the general stink of sea and men and drink.

You were uncomfortably aware of yourself. Dressed in some prettied-up rags, your hair pulled out of your face with a strip of cloth, your entire body coated in a slick of sweat and dirt.

You shouldn’t be holding something this expensive. It was wrong.

Hell, you didn’t even know where this came from. You didn’t know how he’d gotten his hands on it.

“I can’t take it,” you said decisively, reaching for one of his hands.

He jumped, but the contact was enough to catch him off guard. You turned his palm upwards, placing the necklace in the centre and gently curling his fingers over it.

“It’s too… much,” you said, shaking your head. You tried to smile at him, but you knew there’d be a melancholic touch to it.

“I’m sorry,” he frowned, casting his eyes downwards. “I just… I wanted to say thank you. For putting up with u—with me.”

“If you want to say thank you,” you mused, crossing your arms over your chest. “How about you teach me to sword fight?”

He puffed out his cheeks as he pouted at you. You weren’t sure if he’d meant to do it or not. “I thought you said you knew how to use a sword.”

Those words had been seared into the back of his brain for the past two months.

“I mean—” You swallowed, straightening your shoulders. “I do, but not well…”

Bokuto blinked at you, completely unsure of what to say.

Did he want to spend more time with you? Absolutely.

“Okay.”

The word left his mouth before he’d run through all the options. Did he trust himself not to make a complete and utter fool of himself, should the two of you be alone? Absolutely not.  

But when you smiled at him like that, maybe he didn’t mind the thought of humiliating himself.

✧ ✧

“It might be better if you held it with two hands,” Bokuto mused, his own cutlass falling to his side as he took a step closer to you.

You sighed, lowering your blade. “Right.”

Gods, you were tired.

Bokuto had made good on his agreement without complaint. If anything, he seemed a bit too enthusiastic about it. He’d shown up a good three hours before opening, and had launched into his lesson before you’d even had time to process what was going on. You hadn’t even had your sword at the ready.

But it had gone well, all things considered. So well that you’d insisted on doing it again.

This was now your fourth lesson. You had a lot to learn, and Bokuto certainly wasn’t a bad teacher; so long as you could wrap your head around what he was saying.

And usually, you’d be able to have a good time.

But today was different. Today, you couldn’t put up a veneer of joviality. There was too much to worry about.

“Hey, are you alright?” Bokuto pouted, tilting his head at you.

You flinched, drawn out of your own thoughts by his voice.

You hadn’t heard those words in a while. You hadn’t really had time to make friends in this port city, let alone find people who gave a damn about your well-being. You’d just been so busy, running the tavern. Its reputation hadn’t helped you in the social sphere, either. It was hard convincing people you were worth their time when you were known for supplying pirates with their ale. No, the only people who looked out for you were back home.  

Like your poor father.

No. No, don’t.

It set upon you before you could stop it. The lump in your throat. The tremble in your hands. The burning at the corner of your eyes.

It took only a second for you to come undone.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Bokuto started, his sword clattering on the ground as his hands came up to clutch your shoulders. That was enough to shock you back to the moment at hand.

“I’m sorry!” You gasped, covering your face with your hands. Gods, this was embarrassing. What sort of tavern owner cried in front of her own damn customers?

“Don’t apologise!” He cooed. “You don’t have anything to apologise for!”

Oh, but you certainly did. Before your days running the tavern you might’ve completely broken down in front of him, dignity be damned. But you were much better at holding your composure now. Several months of serving pirates would do that to you.

“I’m…” You took a deep breath, clenching your fists. “Can we finish early for today? I’ve just got… a lot of things I’m dealing with right now.”

Bokuto gazed at you sadly, running gentle hands up and down your arms. “Of course.”

“Sorry to bother you,” you said, keeping your voice as stable as possible.

“You can… talk to me,” he murmured, squeezing your arms gently.

You looked up at him. You knew you shouldn’t. You knew you might regret it later.

But fuck, you needed to talk to someone.

“It’s just…” You swallowed, trying to ignore the tightness in your chest. “My father’s ill.”

“Oh.” Bokuto’s whole demeanour deflated. You closed your eyes, trying to block out the look on his face.

“And… and all the money I’m earning out here is being sent home for treatment,” you sighed. “They’ve even called in some mages to have a look at him, but that gets… expensive.”

“I can imagine,” Bokuto frowned, unsure of whether or not he should wrap his arms around you. Would that make it worse? Make it better?

“That’s not even taking into account the cost of running this place.” You bit your lip, gesturing to the tavern in question. “Or how expensive it is to subsidise my family. Mother’s income alone isn’t near enough to help them get by…”

You didn’t know why you were telling him all this. He didn’t need to hear all this.

“I’m sorry,” you swallowed, crossing your arms over your chest. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Hey now.” Bokuto shook his head, wrapping his arms around you and drawing you into his chest.

You flinched in surprise, but you didn’t move away. He was warm – and muscular. And it had been a long, long time since anyone had held you like this.

“I told you not to apologise, didn’t I?” He hummed, resting his chin on the top of your head. “It sounds like you’ve got a lot on your shoulders.”

You nodded weakly. Your arms were trapped between your body and his, but you really, really wanted to wrap them around his waist.

“You can just relax for now, okay?” He said, giving you a little squeeze. “Take a breather.”

He loosened his grip a bit. Just enough for you to manoeuvre your arms around his waist, pulling yourself closer to him.

He’d intended to let you go, fearing that this was all too much for you. Apparently, that wasn’t the case.

But no matter how fast his heart was beating, or how embarrassingly red the entire top half of his body must be, he wouldn’t deny you this moment.

Not if it might just help you smile.

✧ ✧

“Hey, hey, hey!”

That bright smile really did nothing but bring you relief, didn’t it?

“Hello, Bokuto,” you smiled, fighting off your exhaustion. It was about an hour or so until your official opening time, but you certainly wouldn’t begrudge his company.

He half-ran up to the bar, smile in tow. It hadn’t faded even a little bit since he’d opened the door.

“What’s got you so happy?” You chuckled, looking him up and down.

“Well,” he grinned, voice a little more theatrical than usual. “I spoke to the fellas.”

“Huh?”

“Hello,” Akaashi nodded.

You jumped. Where had he come from? Had he even walked through the front door? Or had you just been so distracted by Bokuto?

Oh, but you had something else to worry about.

A fat sack of coins, sitting on the table you’d just been cleaning.

“What’s this?” You frowned, looking between the two of them.

“I may have mentioned that you were… having a bit of financial trouble, and we decided that… we wanted to help in any way we could,” Bokuto mumbled, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “So we went around to the other guys who come here and we asked them to throw in a little cash.”

Your eyes focused on the bag again. How much was there? You pulled the string at its neck with a trembling hand, daring a look inside.

Shit, were these all gold?

“I can’t take this.” You shook your head, holding your hands up like a shield. “It’s too—"

“Aha!” Bokuto pointed a finger at you, a triumphant grin on his face. “I knew you’d say that!”

You blinked at him.

“You see, this isn’t a gift! This is a combined tip from all of your patrons! Money given willingly, as a thanks for your service! So, you have no reason to feel bad about accepting it!”

You stared at him. Of course he’d come up with something like that.

“You deserve to be happy,” Bokuto said, cheeks flushed as he struggled to meet your gaze. “And… you’re not going to be happy if you’ve got all this stuff to worry about. So… so hopefully this’ll help.”

Your body moved before your mind did.

You weren’t sure how you cleared the distance between the two of you, but your arms were around his neck, pressing your body against his. The poor boy froze, both heart and mind doing backflips.

“Thank you, Bokuto,” you smiled, loosening your hold around his neck and moving back just enough to get a proper look at his face.

He looked like he was about to burn up, but he was beaming. Strange and chaotic and silly as he could be, you really were fond of him. Fond of the amusement he brought to any and all who interacted with him. Fond of the weird way he looked at things, so optimistic and kind. Fond of how he seemed to bring light with him whether he went.

You noticed, not without some amusement, that Akaashi was no longer in the room.

You could certainly take the hint.

Your hands came up to cup his face, and you marvelled at the look of tentative excitement in his eyes.

“You’re a bit like a typhoon,” you chuckled, gaze flicking from his eyes to his lips.

You didn’t miss the way his Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Is that… a bad thing?” He mumbled, hands absentmindedly finding their way to your waist.

“Not at all,” you smiled. You stood on your tiptoes, pressing your lips to his with the most chaste of kisses. You lingered for just a moment longer than necessary, revelling in the sharp little breath he took.

When you met his eyes again, there was a new glint in them. One you rather liked.

“Can you… do that again?”

You laughed, rubbing one of your thumbs over his cheek. 

If you hadn’t inherited this den of rogues and rapscallions, this wonderful mess of a man wouldn’t have come crashing into your life. Life was a funny thing, wasn’t it? You’d been so ungrateful when you’d first arrived, and now look at you. Kissing a pirate. You could never have predicted it. 

But maybe pirates weren’t so bad, after all.

[cheri-translates]

[CN] 3rd Anniversary Love Carnival - Victor

🍒 Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for an event which has not been released in English servers! 🍒

Victor’s Prologue: here

3rd Anniversary Masterlist: here

[ PART ONE ]

The moment we step into the carnival venue, my gaze is completely consumed by a gigantic merry-go-round.

MC: What a dream-like merry-go-round! Let’s ride this as our first attraction!

When Victor sees the golden coloured merry-go-round before him, his expression freezes in place for a moment. However, he still stands in the queue with me.

MC: Eh? You’re agreeing just like that?!

MC: “I don't waste my time on such senseless things”.

I mimic Victor, channelling a stern expression.

MC: Don’t you typically say that? Why did you agree so quickly today?

I make a face at him. When Victor sees this, he furrows his brows and gives me a gentle knock on the head.

Victor: Spending my time on a pointless rejection is even more of a waste.

I turn around, glaring at Victor. However, all he does is stare back plainly at me.

Victor: Because of a certain childish individual, my tolerance levels have increased by quite a lot.

I specially pick a double-manned horse. Along with the romantic music, the horses start ascending and descending, moving in a circular motion.

Couples in the surroundings are raising their phones, taking photographs with various poses. Every screen is filled with brilliant smiles.

Somewhat influenced by such an atmosphere, I turn my head to look at Victor.

As expected, Victor, who is sitting on a black steed, looks so stern that it’s as though he’s participating in some investment report meeting.

Sensing the gaze I tossed at him, Victor looks at me.

Victor: What is it?

MC: Victor, do you want to smile a little?

Victor: Why?

MC: Because when people are happy, they’d subconsciously want to smile. In the happiest place on earth, and having such an adorable lady in front of you, don't you feel even the slightest bit of happiness?

Victor: You aren’t humble at all.

Despite what he says, I can clearly see a handsome arc at the corners of his lips.

MC: Can you appreciate the joys of being on a merry-go-round now?

Victor: That’s only if seeing you look silly counts as one of the joys.

MC: Can’t you just honestly say that you’re very happy when you’re with me?

I wave my fist at him in a threatening manner.

Victor sighs. Looking back at me, he says in resignation:

Victor: I’m happy. But it has nothing to do with the merry-go-round.

As the music gradually softens, and the merry-go-round is about to complete its turn, I realise that we haven’t taken a picture yet.

Just as I adjust the angle, attempting to include Victor into the frame to obtain a “group photo”, he senses what I'm planning to do.

Victor takes my phone, then leans down closer to me.

Victor: Look at the camera.

He lifts the phone up, pressing the shutter.

[ PART TWO ]

MC: High-altitude glass platform bridge…?

In order to try a more unique attraction, Victor and I have come to the high-altitude glass platform bridge with the direction of the guide.

Victor: Want to try it?

After a moment of hesitance, I nod.

MC: Since we’re already here!

Looking death calmly in the face, I stare at the pathway, resolutely joining the queue.

Although I’ve already mentally prepared myself, I regret it the moment I step onto the platform bridge.

MC: I can’t do this. People need to stand on the ground!

I grip the railing at the side, carefully inching forward at a tortoise’s pace.

Just as I plan to tell Victor about my regret of overestimating my confidence, I lift my head and see him waiting for me composedly.

Likely seeing that I haven’t moved after such a long time, Victor sighs softly, walks towards me, and offers me his hand.

I immediately reach out, holding his large palm.

A warm sensation sprouts from our laced hands. Victor follows my pace, walking slowly to the other end of the platform bridge.

MC; You aren’t afraid?

Victor: Why should I be afraid?

He pauses for a moment, then gives me an explanation which leaves me unable to retort.

Victor: Since it’s open for visitors to experience, there are definitely sufficient safeguards to ensure the safety of the amusement facilities.

MC: …

For a moment, I actually don’t know where I should begin.

The person is the one feeling scared. What does that have to do with the safety of the facilities?

Or should I be in awe that because of such a reason, he can overcome the fear that humans have about falling from high altitudes?

Victor: If you’re really scared, don’t look under your feet. Look forward.

While doing that, I still can’t help but mutter:

MC: During such moments, shouldn’t you say things like “If you’re scared, hold me tight”, or “If you’re scared, just look at me”?

Victor casts me a glance.

Victor: Do you think that’d be useful?

MC: Mr Victor, do you know the power and vigour comfort brings?

Victor: The next time you can’t finish your proposal, I think I could reuse this saying. You can use your vigour to increase efficiency, and not ask me to postpone the meeting.

I look straight into Victor’s eyes, the discipline of the working class enabling me to harden my backbone and face this investor even at a high altitude.

MC: Are you a monster? Must you bring up things that’d upset me at this time?

Victor looks at me, a slight smile in his eyes.

Victor: You’re so full of vigour. I think you aren’t afraid anymore. All right, you can finish the rest of the path yourself.

Hearing this, I realise that the transparent glass platform has already reached its end. The following path is lined with carpet.

In the midst of our banter, I’d actually completed the entire journey without even realising it.

MC: Victor, were you deliberately criticising me earlier to divert my attention?

Victor: I should be the one with questions. When I’m by your side, where else could your focus be diverted to?

I’m left dumbfounded. Victor chuckles, as though he doesn’t care how I’d respond to his question.

Like earlier, he walks in front of me unhurriedly, not releasing the hand holding onto mine.

Victor: The next attraction probably has a queue. Follow closely.

[ PART THREE ]

MC: I didn’t expect the restaurants in the carnival to serve pretty tasty food.

I take a bite out of a heart-shaped lemon cake, and can’t help but exclaim in awe.

Initially, I had only noticed that the food laid out on the tables for patrons was shocking.

The extremely big and bold words on the leaflet - “Carnival Special Couple Set Meal” - stirred my heart.

Without another word, I pulled Victor in, pointing at the leaflet excitedly.

I didn’t expect that no matter whether it was the presentation or the taste, they left one pleasantly surprised.

MC: Victor, should Souvenir also introduce a couple set meal in the future? Like this heart-shaped cake - I’m really optimistic about its popularity in the market! I think it can attract quite a number of people.

Victor: No.

Unsurprisingly, Victor rejects my idea.

I sigh.

MC: CEO Victor, as the most ambitious and most knowledgeable on how to advance in the market, LFG is a business miracle. What does it receive most praise for? Isn’t it how it’s bold enough to try expanding its capabilities? Also, as the manager of Souvenir, are you really not considering including such a mentality into your dishes?

On the spot, I present a report involving how to expand Souvenir, and anticipate his reaction.

Victor is the same as always. Both arms are crossed over his chest as he listens to my report seriously, then he gives his comments.

Victor: The report lacks proper thought. Rejected.

MC: Why’s that?

I feel slightly indignant.

Victor sets down his hands, signalling that I should shift closer.

I have no idea what he’s planning to do, and lean over while confused.

Victor’s fingers brush against the stray hairs near my ear, rescuing a strand of hair which has been entangled with my earring.

When his finger brushes lightly against my earlobe, I suddenly think of how Victor was the one who put on this pair of earrings for me before we headed out this morning.

Victor: Souvenir isn’t a business. Its existence is unrelated to any business models.

MC: What is it related to then?

Victor: The manager’s personal preferences.

He retracts his hand, looking at me calmly.

Victor: The presentation and image of such dishes don’t suit Souvenir’s usual style.

Regretfully, I split the heart-shaped strawberry pie, placing half onto Victor’s plate.

MC: Since the manager has already put it that way…

MC: It looks like I can only seize this opportunity, and experience the fluffy, soft strawberry pie here.

I let out a soft sigh. In my mind, I can’t help but imagine - if Victor were to make this, I wonder how it’d taste.

MC: It’d definitely be several times more delicious than this.

Victor finishes the strawberry pie, and doesn’t seem to hear my soft mutter.

After a short period of silence, Victor’s serious voice pipes up.

Victor: It won’t be an item on the menu.

Victor: But this doesn’t mean I can’t make it for you once at home.

Victor elegantly cuts the food on the plate, not much expression on his face.

Only I know the warmth underneath that quiet display.

MC: When the time comes, I’ll invite Mr Victor to appraise it with me.

[ PART FOUR ]

We walk and pause, finally ending up before the Pendulum ride.

Pointing at the attraction, where shrill cries can be heard constantly, I think of that children’s day when he had taken the “Time Traveler” ride with me.

And how time had stopped for a few seconds during the descent.

[Note] This is a reference to Fairytale Date!

MC: Want to give this a try?

I turn my head, looking at Victor expectantly.

Victor: No.

As I expected, Victor rejects me.

MC: Victor, could you be scared?

Victor: Of course not.

His expression is stern, and he looks forward.

MC: In that case, ride it with me!

While saying this, I pull him along with me and we sit down.

There’s still some time before the ride begins. The chatter and laughter from people in the queue before us continuously drift over.

Enthusiastic visitor: A friend of mine took the Pendulum before. When it was over, he calmly said that it wasn’t much. In the end, he started puking after taking a few steps.

Happy visitor: Hahahaha, the same thing happened to my colleague. He sat for the ride in another place once, and screamed until his voice was hoarse at work the next day. He had to drink chinese medicine for the entire day.

I’m somewhat tickled by the conversations.

MC: They’re speaking so exaggeratedly. How could that be possible? What do you think?

The criticism I expected doesn’t arrive.

Finding this a little odd, I look at Victor, realising that he’s strapping on his seatbelt seriously, his expression stern.

Oh…?

I really wish I could take out my phone and snap a picture of this Victor before me.

The Pendulum truly lives up to its name.

At first, I even thought it’d be so-so.

But when the Pendulum’s amplitude grows increasingly larger, till it feels like I’m being tossed around, I can’t help but scream.

MC: Ahhhhh–

This! Is! Too! Scary!

Just when I’m forced to sit through these parabolic motions, my left hand is gently held onto by someone.

Bracing against the violent wind, I open my eyes. Victor is sitting straight and quietly in his seat. His posture is tense, yet he looks as though he’s very calm.

Amid the shrill screams, I can vaguely hear his voice.

Victor: Don’t be afraid.

-

Stepping off the Pendulum, I immediately grasp for the railing at the side.

However, when I see Victor’s crooked tie and slightly unkempt hair, I can’t help but burst into laughter.

This time, I don’t let this chance slip by, and keep this dishevelled Victor in my phone.

I make a decision to have this picture printed out to be placed at the bedside.

Victor: …what are you doing this time?

MC: Nothing, nothing! Oh yes, what do you think of this attraction?

Victor: …so-so.

MC: If you’re afraid, you can just say so. It’s a normal human reaction, and I won’t laugh at you.

Victor: I’m not afraid.

MC: In that case…

I look at Victor, my smile growing wider.

MC: Let’s ride it again!

Victor: …

MC: You aren’t going to prove that you aren’t afraid?

Victor: Let’s go then.

MC: Eh?

Victor: Since you’re so enthusiastic about this ride, you’ll definitely experience it together with me. Am I wrong?

Seeing Victor arch his brows slightly, and turning my game against me, I respond with certainty–

MC: I’m sorry! We’ll head to another attraction right now!

[ PART FIVE ]

Perplexed and not knowing which attraction to go to next, an uproar in front attracts my attention.

MC: Eh? Did something happen?

I pull Victor forward with me.

I see a man holding a large bunch of roses and pink balloons, kneeling down on one knee in front of a woman.

The woman’s face is red from shyness, and her eyes are filled with touching emotions and surprise.

MC: Someone’s proposing!

Looking at the scene before me, I can’t help but tilt my head and whisper into Victor’s ear as he stands beside me.

MC: It’s so sweet. I hope they can be together for a very long time!

Victor turns his head slightly, as though sensing the envy in my tone.

Victor: You’re very envious?

MC: A little.

Victor frowns slightly, looking as though he can’t comprehend it.

Very quickly, however, he seems to think of something.

Victor: Stand here and don’t move. Wait for a while.

Before I can react, Victor has already left.

I stand rooted in place.

At the side, the proposal is still ongoing. The man stammers as he takes her down a walk through memory lane, clumsily taking out a ring box.

The girl’s eyes have long since been brimming with happy tears.

I look at Victor, not knowing what he’s going to do, and not knowing what will happen next.

Under my expectant and nervous gaze, he walks over to the person selling balloons, and buys a small balloon flower.

MC: …

I knew it!

Victor: Give me your hand.

When Victor returns, he speaks in his usual tone.

Then, he holds up my hand, lowers his eyes, and ties the balloon flower to my wrist.

Seeing this childish action contrasted with Victor’s serious expression, I can’t help but chuckle.

With me, he’s done so many things that are, according to his standards, a waste of time, meaningless and utterly childish.

It doesn’t seem to be a bad thing though.

My heart is encased with a sweetness. Raising my wrist happily, I crinkle my eyes as I look at the balloon flower under the sunlight.

MC: It’s so pretty!

My gaze is completely absorbed by the balloon flower, and I don’t even notice that the crowd afar off has burst into applause. That man’s proposal probably succeeded.

Victor: You’re satisfied just like that?

MC: Hehe, the most satisfied person in the world! Let’s go, we still have to head to the next attraction.

I turn my head and prepare to leave, but Victor grabs my wrist.

MC: What…!

Pink coloured balloons and flower petals fill the air, spreading happiness all around.

And in this corner with only the two of us, a gentle kiss descends on my forehead.

Victor: The most childish person in the entire amusement park is probably right in front of me.

Victor looks at me, saying the critique that I couldn’t be more familiar with.

In his eyes, there’s also a smile and gentleness that I couldn’t be more familiar with.

The celebration and clamour have nothing to do with me.

All the happiness and clamour, all the ribbons and fresh flowers, can’t compare to a word from him.

Nor can they compare to the somewhat childish balloon flower on my wrist.

I smile while standing on my tiptoes, wrapping my arms around Victor’s neck, and giving him a kiss.

MC: He’s also in front of me! Being childish with you is the happiest thing in the world.

I hear a soft chuckle, then a warm breath. Following this, my forehead feels a tender touch for the second time.

Victor: Dummy.

Fireworks event: here

[mimik-u]

Flower Child, Chapter 16: “Yellow (II)”

AO3 Link

i.

Poppy took little care to disguise the surprise in her pale face, her brows disappearing into her hairline as she visibly struggled to comprehend why her employer might be asking such an unexpected question.

“Ahhhh, y-yes?” Came the clumsy, fumbling reply. “H-he is, ma’am. Room 11037. I sent the flowers there—just as you asked!”

She clearly assumed that she was in trouble, an assumption that Yellow made no haste to correct as her cool gaze traveled briefly to the brass plate on her own closed door—Room 11812—which she knew to be somewhere on the sixth floor from the snatch of conversation between nurses she’d heard from the hallway earlier. She supposed this meant that their rooms were relatively close to each other, give or take an elevator ride or two.

Perfect.

“Excellent,” she murmured distractedly. “Good.”

An audible sigh of relief that wasn’t her own punctured the clinical air.

Pursing her plump lips, Yellow Diamond pulled one leathery thumb over the other and twisted to face Poppy again, who was staring at her expectantly, her ambiguous knitting long forgotten as she leaned forward in her seat, perched almost—if not exactly—birdlike. The woman had wide eyes, bright and yearning, a lovely daffodil yellow. They were almost childlike in their keenness, achingly young, and perhaps it was this reminder above all which made the businesswoman’s own eyes soften minimally as she addressed her with all her usual brusqueness of being.

“Poppy?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Please,” Yellow grimaced, “if only for this conversation, and ideally, all the ones to come, you can drop the ma’am’s.”

It had been gratifying to be called such the first five years of their acquaintance or so, a marker that the CEO had come into her own as a figure to be deferred to with such honorifics. (Once upon a time, she had merely been the CEO’s daughter, a title which came with no accolades other than privilege and patronization.) However, she supposed that since they were drawing close to ten years of having known each other, of having cohabited the same space for so many hundreds upon hundreds of days, that the relationship between them was already well established.

Poppy was once again stricken blind with no time to recover her face.

Her thin mouth popped open and then shut in a comical, half-moon shape.

“Yes… of course, ma��um,” she floundered, her fingers spidering nervously on her lap. “Of course…”

Yellow’s lips twitched involuntarily, a gesture she duly paid for as a sharp pain cracked through her cheek—no doubt owing to the seven stitches laced there.

Oi.

“Semantics aside”—she waved her uninjured hand vaguely and suppressed a wince—“when you called up here… were you able to discover what was wrong with the kid?”

Poppy frowned, her pointed nose twisting in consternation as she thought upon it, and it was with a small sigh that she shook her head. 

“No, ma’am”—she blushed furiously —“I mean, n-no. I don’t think they could tell me for patient confidentiality protocols… I apologize, Mrs. Diamond. Should I have pressed for an answer?”

“No,” Yellow returned shortly, her voice suddenly weary. “No, you did well, Poppy.”

“T-thank you.”

And they lapsed into a silence then that wasn’t entirely natural, taut like a wire that had only recently been strung. Yellow Diamond did not care for the silence—so alien to her and so heavy, like an intrusive embrace from a stranger. And yet, for the past four and sundry years, this very stranger had been living in her damn suite, taking up space on the couch she slept upon in the study, and accompanying her down the empty halls as she kept one ear primed to her left where the door of the master bedroom was perpetually cracked open, never closed lest she go in there and find her wife—

The stranger didn’t pay rent either.

Bastard.

Yellow went back to rubbing her thumbs together again, distantly soothed by the way that the striations of each digit intersected every so often before breaking apart again, over and over, like trains gliding over the rails of long worn tracks.

It was true she could just have asked her wife what was wrong with the boy.

Could have opened that tentative line of communication just a little further. 

Could have stuck one of her heeled boots just inside the door.

But perhaps that was the unbroken thread in the grand scheme and scope of Yellow Diamond’s life, the recurring truth that reared its ugly head through the bars of her ribcage every time she so much as breathed. 

Hypotheticals.

That was all she had anymore.

Mere possibilities.

Grains and ash and dust.

Teasing her empty fingertips.

Salting them.

I could have talked to Blue.

You would have— I would have—if only she would just be sensible .

(She’s never sensible anymore.)

(And you’re too demanding.)

(She called you cold, Yellow.)

(You’re cold. )

The thought struck Yellow Diamond cleanly, like a steel-edged blow. Her breath hitched, the strain pulling at her sore chest.

I shouldn’t have yelled at Pink that night.

I could have gone into her room.

It didn’t have to end like that.

But it did—and she did—and that was that, the damage irrevocable and irreversible and done, the finality of it all echoing pitifully through the emptiness of space and time. Like ink, its blackness spilled across the pages of her memory, seeped and spread and poured. Like sour wine, it was impossible to ever really swallow. 

But, Lord, how the woman had tried.

She had wanted to move on, to limp forward the best that she could.

She had felt as though that this was the only conceivable way she could exist in a world without her daughter.

This was the means by which she could wake up every morning to a merciless sun and live with herself—dammit.

Leave Pink Diamond behind.

Allow the very image of her to become obscured by the rubble.

Run.

But perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps she had been wrong this entire fucking time, and she was only now realizing it, and it was too late to be realizing it because time, oh God, time—

Time made fools of them all.

It slipped down an hourglass and through her fingers with all the mere possibilities of the life she and her wife and her daughter could have lived—grains and ash and dust.

As fading sunlight slumped through the window like a body on the floor, Yellow’s eyes dared to burn as she stared at her long hands emptily. They were stilled on her lap, intertwined lightly, with all the tenderness of a feathery kiss.

Kissed, she thought to herself.

When was the last time she had been kissed?

How long had it been since Blue Diamond’s lush lips had pressed against her own with a kind of intensity that had consecrated them both divine? Oh, God, how inseparable they had been back then—colliding stars dancing together in the darkness of their room, the rumble of their voices the only echo of a sound in the space between them. They created supernovas every time they so much as breathed into each other’s skin; they expanded, and they collapsed into each other, and they knew each other, and they tangled in the stardust of their own bare radiances.

With all suddenness, they fell apart.

Their daughter died.

And neither of them could barely stand to look at each other lest they see the reflection of that twenty-one year old girl mirrored in each other’s eyes—her vivid smile, the heels of her red sneakers flashing against the hallway floor, the way her freckles used to bundle together when she laughed.

“Mrs. Diamond?” Poppy prodded uncertainly, and it was with a jolt that Yellow remembered that she was not entirely alone. Her gaze refocused itself on the maid as a dull flush suffused her sharply hewn cheeks. Her temples throbbed. Her entire body ached.

She missed Pink.

(Dead, gone, never coming back…)

And she missed Blue.

(She was terrified to so much as look at her.)

“Poppy…” She began reluctantly, and this in and of itself was an unstudied phenomenon, for Yellow Diamond was never reluctant.

 The syllables strangled themselves in the cylinder of her throat. 

“How…” She winced at her own weakness—she loathed herself—she pressed on anyway. It was all she knew how to do. “How have I done it?”

She paused heavily as she raised her head to greet the maid’s wide-eyed gaze. The white Peter Pan collar of Poppy’s blouse pressed innocently at the base of her slender neck. She wore a necklace strung with white imitation pearls.

“Done what, ma—Mrs. Diamond?”

“How… have I inspired your loyalty all these years?” Try though she did, it was impossible to subjugate the open wound in her voice into her usual cadence of tone—the hardness, the calmness, and the simultaneous assuredness of being which so defined the image of herself she projected to the world.

But there was no such thing as the world in that tiny hospital room.

It was only her and Poppy and the gentle humming of nearby machines.

“Heaven knows I pay you well,” she continued haltingly, “but if there’s one thing I know about money”—and the multibillionaire knew a hell of a lot—“it’s that sometimes… it can prove to be insufficient payment.”

Sometimes, there was just not enough money in the world to fix, to heal, to ameliorate, to restore.

Blue Diamond had called her cold.

Do you really think I could be so callous, Blue?

You act like it sometimes.

Perhaps she had a point. (She always had a point.)

“Forget it,” Yellow said abruptly, glancing away. This was stupid; she was being childish. She suddenly wanted to be left alone so she could revel in just how stupid and childish she was being without a one person audience to watch. “I’m being silly.”

It was not a dismissal at the same time that it was a clear dismissal; she folded her arms across her stomach and neglected to be gentle with the left one.

A dull ache spasmed through her hand.

She refused to meet the maid's gaze.

And yet, for all this, for every subtle and unsubtle portent that had been bluntly thrown her way, Poppy Aurelia did not move.

For nearly a decade, she had been by Yellow Diamond’s side, attentive to her every need, a feat which was only possible because she had become attuned to every microscopic nuance in her employer’s face, her voice, her body language. So she knew that she’d been dismissed, or more exactly, Yellow knew that she knew.

So, why then was she moored to her hardback chair, staring at Yellow from those pale, lamp-like eyes of hers?

Why then, with all the silent alarms trumpeting their signals, did she stay?

Poppy’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet as she began to talk; she fed her stuttering words to the floor, not daring to look directly Yellow in the eye. The flat of her left shoe bobbed nervously against the cleanly tile floor—tap, tap, tap.

But still, she spoke.

And she said, quite clearly, “I… I don’t think y-you’re being silly at all, Yellow Diamond… I… just think you’re… er… asking the w-wrong question.”

It was the first time in the entirety of their acquaintance that Poppy had ever interrogated the validity of Yellow’s words. She opened and closed her spindly fingers on top of her lap; every tense line in her body looked as though it was preparing for a retribution that didn’t come as the businesswoman only raised a brow in the surest measure of her restraint.

“What question should I be asking then?”

She obliged.

She played along.

She felt compelled to.

She had no choice if she wanted an answer, if she wanted to know why there were still people in her life who tolerated and endured her, who stayed and didn’t leave. (The list was growing precariously short with the passing years, but to be fair, it had never been especially long in the first place.)

“Ask me why I came in the first place, Mrs. Diamond. Ask me why I accepted your job offer all those many years ago.” A pause and then a hurried addendum, rushed, like a spillage of tea: “Only if you want to, though, of course. Please.”

Yellow Diamond simply stared at her—puzzled, floored, and somehow, incredibly enough, haughty all at once.

“You came because I stole you right from beneath Peter Hoffman’s snooty nose,” she returned immediately, almost flippantly. “He always thought he was better than everyone else just because his brother-in-law was the governor, but I showed him—”

Poppy cut across her.

Another first in their decade long relationship.

The maid at least had enough courtesy to look abashed at what she had done, her cheeks scribbled pink, and yet, she pressed on anyway, waving her long hands frantically. 

“Not that part, Mrs. Diamond,” she said hastily. “I-I mean, it’s related to that part, my apologies, but… a-ah… do you remember what you said to me then? In the dining room? You were there for a business meeting, and all the other executives were heading into the lounge to smoke… but you… you lingered, Mrs. Diamond. You stayed.”

It was vague—she hadn’t thought much about the exchange even in the moment that it had happened—but snatches of that night began to collect like wispy clouds across the canvas of Yellow’s mind, swirling and listless, faint but undoubtedly there. 

She’d just turned forty-six, and she was on top of the goddamn world.

She had straightened her tie in the same moment she had straightened from her chair… and there had been a girl, standing at the periphery of everything, who couldn’t have been much older than twenty.

She stared at her hands as so many suited men left the room, wincing each time one of them so much as glanced her way.

So many of them glanced her way, taunting.

Lecherous.

“I pulled you aside because Hoffman had said something stupid,” she recalled, in that same dismissive tone from before. Hoffman, a big technology magnate in Empire City, was always saying something stupid. It was a wonder his entire body didn’t sag under the weight of his massive ego.

But Poppy shook her head slightly.

“It wasn’t… just something stupid,” she corrected softly. Every premature line in the maid’s sharp face testified to the fact that she remembered these events with perfect clarity, the words that were spoken over a sumptuous roast pig, how maybe even the shadows of the candelabra danced across the gilded walls. She continued to curl and uncurl her fingers on top of her lap for the want of something to do with them. She saw images that Yellow didn't, heard echoes that the executive had scarcely deigned to register as sounds in the first place. “He told his colleagues that while I was a good maid… it was a shame I didn’t have more of an a-ass on me. I was just twenty-three, and that was my first major job, and h-he said things like that to me all the time, Mrs. Diamond. He was awful—that man. He likely still is.”

Another quick memory.

A sharp glimpse of it.

A wedding invitation that had sat on her desk for a few weeks before Yellow had unceremoniously shuffled it into the trash with the rest of the junk—in the fall, Peter Hoffman would be getting married for the third time, and his latest soon-to-be-bride was a thirty-four year old model from Europe.

He was getting close to seventy-three.

Poppy sniffed rather loudly and tried to hide the fact of it surreptitiously, swiping her beaky nose against the sleeve of her blouse.

“So, you pulled me aside, Mrs. Diamond, and you gave me a job, yes, but you also said something to me that I haven’t forgotten since then,” she continued.

And then, quite unexpectedly, with a suddenness that Yellow dimly recognized to be bravery, the tiny maid looked her employer in the eye, daffodil striking burning gold, and somehow, withstanding the heat.

Refusing, quite defiantly, to wither.

“You told me to never accept what I didn’t deserve, Mrs. Diamond,” Poppy said matter-of-factly, her voice confident, unwavering, irrefutably sure. She straightened a little in her chair, squaring her slender shoulders. “That I had a right to demand better than what I was being given, and that what I was currently being given wasn’t deserved. It’s advice I’ve taken to heart from the moment I accepted your offer, and it’s advice that has kept me in your employ all these years.”

“Poppy—” She hastened to interject, to protest, to contradict—consummate contrarian that she was. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, only that whatever she said would be an attempt to stem the praise she could not possibly deserve. This had all been nine years ago; she had simply wanted to get back at a cantankerous old bastard whom she had always despised; words were nice, but they were never reliable measures of conduct.

But again—amazingly enough—Poppy Aurelia was faster. Again, she boldly interrupted Yellow, leaning forward in her seat. The sun from the window haloed her blonde hair, highlighting even the parts of it which stuck up at the top.

“I-I know you’re not the easiest person in the world… I’ve watched you and your family, and I’ve worked for you, Mrs. Diamond, a-and I know you, I think. You can be harsh, and y-you’re often demanding. Y-you get irritable when you’re tired, and y-you're honestly always tired… but that doesn’t make you’re a bad person, Mrs. Diamond. That doesn’t make you a monster.”

Poppy paused then, and she deliberated, and she chewed on her lower lip, seemingly weighing her next words against the risk of speaking them into existence.

Perhaps they were offensive.

At the very least, they were likely inappropriate.

In the end, though, she inhaled bracingly.

She ignored all the carefully drawn lines of etiquette.

She chose to let them fly.

“That just makes you… human.”

Five words, six nervously uttered syllables.

The sentence landed with a kind of finality between them, and there was tension in the air, electricity, as the two of them stared at each other over its heaviness. 

Poppy’s eyes were protuberant with anxiety, the fear that she had finally overstepped scrawled all over her face in red blush.

Yellow Diamond could have been carved from stone for all that she could muster herself to move, her lips parted slightly.

She swallowed thickly.

A feeling like eruption constricted the column of her throat.

And then, through the silence, despite everything awful that the silence was and had ever represented, she said, very softly, very quietly, “Thank you, Poppy… I needed to hear that.”

Poppy’s mouth collapsed into a trembling smile.

She fell backwards into her chair, seemingly exhausted with relief.

Courage cost something after all.

“Of course, ma’am,” she said weakly. “I-I mean, Mrs. Diamond. I’m sorry! I—!”

But far from being affronted, Yellow Diamond laughed—actually laughed—the sound hoarse and a little reckless, half-mad and almost, if not explicitly, fond.

“You’re hopeless, Poppy.”

The maid's smile became teasing. She picked up her knitting needles again, holding up her scarf-sweater-doily-thing up to the light pouring in from the window to inspect it better.

“O-only a little, ma'am.”

ii.

When Yellow Diamond returned home from the office that evening, opening the door with far more force than the gesture typically required, she discovered her wife tucked into the far end of their white couch, knees pulled up to her chest, an open book perched cozily in her blanketed lap. The flames from the nearby hearth bathed the living room in warm, flickering tones—autumnal oranges and honeyed ambers deep enough to get lost in, tentative golds that seeped across the spruce floor. 

Readers balanced carefully on the tip of her nose, Blue didn’t so much as glance up at her arrival, absorbed by whatever she was reading—likely some verbose classic or anthology or theological theory one. She pressed the closed end of her highlighter to her lips absentmindedly, almost appearing to chew upon it. Her long, brown hair was swept across the side of her neck, billowing in graceful waves over her left shoulder.

Yellow peeled her snow-dusted overcoat and scarf off with disgust and slammed each of these articles onto the adjacent coatrack, nearly sending the pole to the floor with the harshness of the action. She flashed a hand out and caught it just in time, but…

“Fuck!” She spat, glowering at the damn thing for daring to be so unsteady. “Shit.”

And it was with a soft sigh, knowing —in that almost haughty manner of hers—that Blue replaced her bookmark between the folds of her pages and finally looked up, her dark brow lifted along the lines of her weary amusement.

“I take it you’ve had a bad day?”

“No,” Yellow growled immediately, stalking over to the couch and plopping down next to Blue’s covered feet. Perhaps in the mood to defy all the studied rules of decorum tonight, she spread her legs wide and hunched forward, shoulders impolitely slumped.

A pause.

Her wife’s lips twitched in the place of a reply.

“Yes,” she broke. She admitted grudgingly. She dragged fingers through her stiff, blonde hair, pleasuring in the sensation of finally being able to muss it up once more. It took liberal amounts of hairspray to tame it into some manner of acceptability every morning. “My mother… we got into it again today.”

As she was only thirty to White Diamond’s sixty-eight, slowly but assuredly, there was a transition of power taking place at the older woman’s pride and joy, the company upon which she had built her titanium bones—Diamond Electric. Now a multinational conglomerate, it had begun simply enough by selling top of the line household appliances… but recently, beneath Yellow’s watchful eye and grasp of the new age market, the company was sinking its teeth into more contemporary avenues of growth, dabbling in radio and television broadcasting, as well as vehicle manufacturing. 

“You’re always getting into it,” Blue said dismissively, but all the same, she placed her now closed book on the arm of the sofa—(Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard)—and leaned forward to listen more attentively, encircling her legs with her flowing sleeves. Her vivid eyes searched Yellow’s face in that singularly incisive way of hers, as though she was combing the woman from the inside out, taking her measure without so much as saying a word. 

It was always an odd feeling.

To be so thoroughly seen, understood, and adored by another.

X-rayed, diagnosed, and still, somehow, against all odds, loved.

“But do you want to talk about it?” She pressed.

“No,” Yellow flushed immediately. She had seized involuntarily as firelight caught the warm expanse of Blue Diamond’s exposed neck, and, for the first time since her workday had begun, a feeling other than thinly suppressed frustration rose up the column of her own throat. Her mouth was suddenly dry… the beginnings of a mischievous smile rose on her lips, crooked at the corners. “There’s a different way I can work through my feelings, I think…”

She leaned forward then, very much intent on pressing her lips on the exact place fire had already touched her wife first, but with a laugh that was both exasperated and incredulous, Blue placed a slender hand on her chest and pushed her back playfully.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Yellow!” She shook her head, her lilting voice swinging with its own amusement. “Are you aroused by your own anger? Are you so neolithic that you think a hickey is going to make your problems with your mother go away?”

Rebuffed, rejected, disappointed, and intolerably aware that Blue had a point—the woman always had a point—Yellow slumped back against the couch and crossed her arms over her chest, feeling uncomfortably as though she was just another one of Blue’s pupils being scolded for putting a hand in the damn treat jar.

“Well, maybe it would if you’d let me try…” She muttered impetuously, sticking her lips out.

“Later,” Blue promised, a slight purr in her otherwise light voice. “But please forgive me if I’m not especially tantalized by the idea of disrobing knowing you’re thinking about your mother.”

Another point made.

It was no wonder she was a celebrated academic.

“Touché,” Yellow groused brusquely, and it was with all the petulance of a teenager that the heiress stared upwards at the white stretch of ceiling, so as to delay the inevitable moment when she would have to meet her wife’s all-knowing gaze again. The black fan whirled through its circular rotations rhythmically, cleaving the air with long blades that reminded her forcibly of her mother’s expertly manicured nails, lacquered the color of pitch and seven inches long.

Sharp.

Potentially fatal.

Yellow Diamond had grown up knowing what it was like to be stroked softly by them—loved by their cold embrace.

Sometimes, it wasn’t so bad. 

The woman had loved her the best that she knew how—and this wasn’t an especially affectionate love, granted—but, at the very least, it was something. 

She was not entirely unbending.

She was not wholly cold…

Other times, though, White Diamond’s love was like having a knife raked down the canvas of her skin.

She never nicked blood, but the threat was always implicit in the cut of her nails.

“She doesn’t trust me, you know…” The words were seemingly spoken to the empty air, drifting upwards with the fumes from the fire. It almost felt nice to get them off of her chest. Cleansing. “I make one call for the company, and she makes another, but everyone automatically sides with her because she’s just… she’s so… well… you know how my mother is…. You know what she does to a room.”

Just by entering a door, her mother could part the Red Sea and turn it blue if she so pleased; shoulders stiffened to obeisant attention; spines straightened; people paid attention to the words which poured silkily from her black lips. 

If White Diamond said jump, employees at Diamond Electric were trained to already be ten feet from hitting the ground.

This was what authority was after all—control, power, unquestioning, unwavering respect.

“And she undermines me, Blue,” Yellow continued hoarsely, her fingertips digging into the soft press of her skin where she was holding on to herself. “And she makes me look like a goddamn court jester in front of the employees I’m supposed to be in charge of one day. Today, she called my inventory markup naïve in front of our entire team of accountants and proceeded to deconstruct why it was so inadequate for the next thirty fucking minutes… and all those bootlickers, damn them, they snickered behind their hands like were were in high school for God’s sake.”

The memory of the unpleasant meeting seared her wide-open retinas.

Much to her horror, her golden eyes burned where she sat.

She told herself it was simply the smoke.

There was a shift on Yellow’s left—the shuffle of sweeping fabric, a gentle thud as a woolen blanket fell gracelessly to the floor. And within a few seconds of these events, Blue Diamond was pressed against her side, soft and warm and faintly sweet—her clothes, her hair, her smooth skin wreathed with the scent of her favorite floral perfume. 

“Blue, you don’t have to—“

But Blue silently held out a hand.

There was a raised eyebrow of quiet invitation.

And with an immediacy that was instinct, and with an instinct that was sure, Yellow pried her arms away from her chest, and without thinking, without hesitating, without deliberation, rhyme, and reason, threaded her angular fingers together with Blue’s more slender ones until their palms touched, lifelines intersecting.

Together, they grounded each other.

They made each other whole.

“I’ve given you my thoughts on your mother before,” Blue began delicately, and these was a certain hesitancy in the polite intimations of her voice that Yellow knew was only thinly disguised disdain. The two had rarely seen eye to eye before, over matters both macroscopic and minute—but mostly over the problem of how best to love Yellow. The question, implicit but nonetheless distinct, often was, What did the woman deserve?  

Softly spoken words of affirmation, generously given? 

Or the type of tough, disciplined love which had allowed the thirty-year old to graduate at the top of her Harvard class, accolades upon accolades showered down upon her already impressive name?

“However… what I will say is this and leave it be for the night if you so choose…” Blue Diamond took a deep breath, as though steeling herself to utter something rather revolutionary. A long strand of her dark hair fell gracefully between her eyes.“She’s scared, Yellow.”

The effect was instantaneous.

Disbelieving, humored, scandalized, and perfectly unconvinced, Yellow laughed harshly and waited for the punchline that never quite came as she searched her wife over for all the telltale signs of humor, but the woman’s long face was quite serious, her thin brow collected cerebrally above her sea-sprayed eyes. “Have you met my mother, Blue?” She asked incredulously. “The woman’s got gems the size of a damn—”

But Blue Diamond cut across her incisively, frowning thin. “Don’t be crass… but I mean it, Yellow. Don’t you see? Your mother is nearly sixty-nine years old and the company is approximately half her age. She’s raised it as much as she claims to have raised you. This is her baby, whom she has cradled so tenderly for so many decades—her firstborn child that the emperor of age is now demanding that she gives up to him. Understandably, you’re too busy arguing with her to actually listen to the words she’s saying when she’s arguing back, but the message she sends is clear enough.”

“And what would that be?” Yellow returned testily, jerking her head.

Her mother was always a sore subject, tender to even touch.

But Blue, having long been accustomed to the recurring problem at hand, was unfazed; she continued with the maddeningly patient air of a teacher explaining that two and two made four to a toddler who had not quite gotten the concept yet. Her shoulder brushed gently against Yellow’s, brows bent almost pityingly.

“Every time she undermines you, she’s indicating that she’s not ready to part ways with Diamond Electric yet. Cutting you down reassures her that she’s still needed, that she hasn’t yet been rendered obsolete. Her critical eye is always going to be trained in your direction until you can prove to her that you’re ready to fill those ridiculously high heels of hers.”

“But that’s absurd!” Yellow cried. “She wants me to inherit the damn thing. That’s all she ever talks about—how I’m going to inherit the damn thing one day.”

“Yes,” Blue agreed softly, “but who said that human beings are always rational, Yellow? Our hearts are so often at war with our heads, and sometimes, logicality is subsumed by the primal. Your mother can want you to inherit Diamond Electric and also half-resent you for doing so all in one go.”

“If she’s feeling all that, then she needs to go get her head screwed on a little tighter. That’s stupid.” The words seemed peevish to her before they even left her mouth; she chewed on her own lip sullenly as the smile playing across Blue Diamond’s lips grew.

“Yes, well, I didn’t say you had to like it.”

They lapsed into brief silence then, unbroken except for the faint crackling of the fire in the hearth. The redolence of the smoke and the scent of Blue’s perfume wreathed Yellow with soothing familiarity.

She breathed in slowly.

And she breathed out.

Her heartbeat evened.

And all that suddenly became important to her was the notion, the fact, the incredible, undeniable proof that Blue Diamond was warm by her side; there was not an inch between their brushing shoulders; they spoke wordlessly with the interlinking of their hands.

“So what do I do with this information now that I have it?” Yellow asked after a few moments of this, to which the school teacher laughed lightly.

Her pupil had just asked another awfully stupid question after all.

“You simply remember it going forward,” she replied matter-of-factly.“You use it to understand your mother. And by understanding her, become better than her. You can avoid the mistakes she made. You can rise above her shortcomings and know—intimately and proudly—that you did.”

Yellow’s skepticism must have shown in her face because Blue only shook her head at the expression in it, cutting across her just as she opened her mouth to respond. 

“Prodigious though White Diamond is, she has yet to realize her Achilles heel—that she, too, is vulnerable, that she, too, feels and aches and fears. And the longer she restrains herself from this self-knowledge, the less she resembles you, Yellow.”

“Me?” Yellow couldn’t help but laugh; it was her last defense against the unexpected knowledge her wife seemed to possess concerning the nature of her mother. Where she was coming up with all this, the woman could scarcely figure it out. Yellow had studied her mother for thirty years and still felt as though she was barely scratching that pristinely cut surface, smooth all over.

(Honed around the edges. Dangerous to behold.)

“Yes, you, Yellow Diamond,” she said fondly. “You, who feels so deeply. You, who loves with abandon, the telltale signs of your care scrawled all over your face in permanent ink. You and you alone.”

Blue leaned forward then, slowly, carefully, so that their foreheads were touching.

It was a familiar gesture, one that Yellow completed automatically, all instinct.

She pressed her lips against Blue Diamond’s hairline, tasting the scent of her fragrant shampoo.

“And that, my dear, is one of the many reasons why I love you,” she finished quietly. “Because I know, beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt, that you love me back.”

Yellow’s throat suddenly tightened; she swallowed, tried to regroup, and pitifully failed.

And she failed because she couldn’t stop thinking about how right her wife was; she had a point.

She rarely ever didn’t.

“Always,” she finally whispered, grateful, overwhelmed, adoring, undone. “Always, Blue.”

“Yes.” Blue’s lips grazed her own as the shadows on the wall swelled around them, flickering, dancing, expanding, convulsing… snow swirled across the tall floor to ceiling windows, flurrying white against an infinite night sky… “I know.”

They sunk together into the couch then.

They danced and expanded, swirled and convulsed.

Infinite.

iii.

With an abruptness that was almost violent, and an almost violence that sent a sharp pang up her injured arm, Yellow Diamond braced her shaking hands on the edge of the sink in the bathroom attached to her room. There were a few lacerations on her knuckles where they had scraped tiny bits of glass and debris when she had lurched forward in her seat during the accident.

Fresh, they stood out lividly against her skin. 

She examined them with vague disinterest for a handful of seconds as a way to stall for time, to distract from the inevitable moment when she had to look up.

Brush her hair.

Adjust the collar of her pajama top.

Throw a little blush on for the hell and sake of it.

Face herself in the mirror.

Her sweat-slicked palms cooled on top of the scratched porcelain; the seconds whiled down and away, teething upon themselves with each minute she stood in that abysmally tiny room, with its cheaply tiled floors and dingy lighting.

It smelled like hand sanitizer.

Her head pounded, each thud forming a singular accusation against her temples.

(Coward.)

(The name spat itself out at her, landing directly between her eyes.)

(Coward.)

(There was no defense against its validity, no sheathe to blunt the force of its blow.)

(Coward.)

(The raw truth of it wrapped its hands around her organs and squeezed.)

In the end, she was so well-practiced in how to put on a face, that she finished getting ready to leave her room without needing to glance at herself. When she exited the bathroom, she palmed the light a little harder than was necessary.

Room 11037.

The nurse who came by to remove Yellow’s IV earlier had indicated that it was on the fourth floor in the Truman Ward, where chronically ill patients were usually admitted. This wasn’t necessarily news to the businesswoman—she had known for a couple of days now that the kid was rather sick. But even still, there was something about hearing it aloud, in such an objective fashion, that made it feel less abstract than it had when she had briefly talked to Blue about him, so overwhelmed had she been by the fact that her wife was standing in her doorway, seeking her out.

Wanting her.

It didn’t register then, like it was registering so sharply now: Blue was friends with a chronically ill kid.

A kid who might very likely die.

For the last four years, the woman had become a master at inviting her own misery, wrapping it around her shoulders like one of her favorite silken shawls.

Sitting on the edge of her hospital bed, Yellow pulled on her black loafers with painstaking slowness and tried not to resent the fact that her wife was pursuing someone whose death may very well kill her.

(For the last four years, Yellow Diamond had collected each and every last one of her resentments just beneath her skin, where they had writhed. God, how they had seethed.)

As a last minute preparation, she shoved the left hand sleeve of her pajama shirt over her brace and stood up in a motion that would have been fluid were it not for the fact that she teetered dangerously, catching herself at the last second on the post of the bed. She gritted her teeth.

She swore violently.

And then, with terrifying rigidity, unbending to the last, Yellow Diamond moved forward.

It was all she knew how to do.

One foot over the other, each step meticulously measured.

What exactly was she moving towards? The woman couldn’t very well say, much less articulate to herself in a manner that satisfied her rational faculties. Physically, it was the boy—it was the child called Steven, a stranger at the same time he was an increasingly intrusive specter in the household of the Diamonds, a ghost there with all the rest.

The simplest answer was that she wanted to see him for herself, wanted to lay eyes on the human who had miraculously healed her wife.

But the simplest answer was almost pleasant.

In the right light, it could even be construed as kind.

Yellow Diamond was many things.

 She was not, in fact, kind.

iv.

“Argh!”

It was scarcely 4AM when the sound of silence shattered with an abruptness that was quite awful. A baby’s high, inconsolable, agonized wails pitched down the narrow hallway and into the half-opened door which led into the master bedroom, where Yellow Diamond’s sleep-laden eyes opened with a start, uncomprehending of what she was hearing for a handful of disoriented seconds until her wife stirred beneath the angle of her arm. Enveloped in the lock of Yellow’s limbs as she was, Blue struggled at first to lift her head from her pillow. They wrested for a few seconds in the disoriented awkwardness of it all, but eventually, Blue propped herself up on one elbow, her long, dark hair sweeping sideways down her back.

“Pink,” she whispered unnecessarily, glancing at the clock on her bedside table. “She may need changing.”

It was more than likely then that this was true; Blue had an uncanny knack for sussing out which of their daughter’s cries corresponded to each need.

“Wait,” Yellow yawned, swiping her free hand across her tired face. “I’ll get up this time. You need to get some more sleep. Big conference today.”

Blue didn’t need any more convincing.

“I love you,” she sighed in grateful relief as she slumped back down on the pillow in a movement that wasn’t entirely graceful. “Endlessly.”

“Don’t be so affectionate yet,” Yellow teased darkly as she snuck her arm from around her wife’s curving waist. “You can cover 4AM duty tomorrow night.”

“Aye,” came a faint voice muffled by blankets. “There’s the rub.”

Yellow chuckled quietly and pressed a kiss against Blue’s warm cheek before pulling herself out of bed in a flurried mass of tired limbs, bare feet hitting the plush carpet with a thud as she unfolded into the dark air. By the time she had gained the ten or so steps to the doorway, her wife was already asleep again, her light snores drifting upwards from somewhere behind her shoulder...

The path down the hallway to Pink’s room was smooth and familiar after nearly six months of having traced it night after night, called Siren-like to the inescapable sounds of the baby’s screaming. Yellow took the trip at a jog—mostly to wake the parts of her body that the crying hadn’t already—and gently pushed upon the incompletely closed door leading into the nursery.

Softly lit by the waning beams of moonlight pouring through the high window, the crib at the center of the room seemed almost incandescent—ethereal—even if the sounds emitting from it were anything but. Her eyes still half-gummed with sleep, Yellow proceeded to the side of the cradle, bracing her fingertips on the wooden frame as she looked down at her daughter—her beloved, her beautiful, her squalling daughter, Pink Iphigenia Diamond, whose tiny, button nose was all twisted in the agony of her continuing cries, face red and wet with the exertion.

It was with a certain steadiness that Yellow bent down and brought the baby into her arms, tucking her small head gently against her neck as she patted her bottom and bounced her up and down, up and down, as she’d done so many times before.

“Shhh,” she pleaded, cupping her palm around Pink’s back. “Shh, I’m here.”

The baby continued to whine for a few more minutes still, but the intensity of the sounds lessened the longer Yellow held her and rocked, back and forth, shifting her weight from one leg to the other until the six-month old was nearly quiet in the embrace of her arms. It was then that she made quick work of changing the dirtied diaper, discarding the soiled one in the garbage, and redoing the clasps on Pink’s onesie, always cursing how many of them there seemed to be.

Now laying agreeably on the changing table as Yellow fastened the last button, Pink stared at her curiously, the tender skin around her dark eyes still edged with the trace remnant of her tears. “Between you and the alarm clock,” she told the baby sternly, “I’m never going to sleep again.”

Pink gurgled in unknowing agreement.

From the changing table, the pair of them proceeded to the rocking chair next to the crib, which Yellow flopped into quite unceremoniously, even though she was gentle, ceaselessly careful, as she cradled Pink in her arms, swathing her in the woolen blanket that White Diamond had sent from her latest retirement travels in Peru. The woman was always sending Pink expensive trinkets from sundry countries, and with them, neatly written memos about the welfare of Diamond Electric. 

Sometimes, Yellow swore her mother continued to keep up with the company’s stocks better than DE’s team of expertly trained accountants did.

She was also positively sure that this didn’t reflect well on that team of expertly trained accountants.

Between the lines of asking—(demanding)—for more pictures of Pink and declaiming—(boasting)—the exotic natures of her travels, White Diamond’s more pressing message was clear, even if it was subtle, in that overwhelmingly honeyed way of hers.

Keep moving forward.

Continue advancing.

There was never a finish line for success, and therefore, no room for complacency, so darling, my dear, keep one eye on the road and the other over your shoulder lest the wolves attack from behind…

As moonlight dripped gently upon their heads, Yellow glanced down at the now slumbering baby in her arms, whose tiny fingers failed to encompass the whole of her mother’s thumb. The glow of the night settled softly on her milk white face, darkening the freckles spread like cookie crumbs across her cheeks.

She wondered to herself, very quietly then, had her own mother ever held her like this, so softly and so tenderly in the calm of early morning?

It was absurd to imagine White Diamond as being anything other than immaculately put together, arranged in a striking jumpsuit, balancing a portfolio beneath one arm and pressing a phone against her ear with the other.

Softness, tenderness, gentleness, grace—these were not words that readily stuck themselves to her stick figure frame.

She resisted those labels.

Unfailingly mocked them.

How she’d hate to see her own daughter even now…

Pressing an almost defiant kiss against Pink’s smooth forehead, Yellow concluded that it was unlikely her mother had ever yielded to a night like this; that was what the long line of nannies and governesses had been for after all.

She didn’t feel any particular resentment at the fact; she had long made her peace with the fact that the mother-daughter relationship between them was more or less transactional, unless, of course, they were bickering and fighting.

And yet, as she rocked her own daughter in that chair which ever so slightly creaked with each rhythmic sway, Yellow pitied her mother, who—last time she had checked—was apparently drinking thousand dollar bottles of wine in Paris and still finding time to criticize her only child.

It sounded vaguely unpleasant, going through life with eyes wide open all the time, head perpetually tilted over one’s shoulder.

Surely, she thought, the woman had to be tired.

v.

If Yellow Diamond attracted one pair of eyes as she crossed the clinically white hallway, then she attracted two dozen of them as nurses, doctors, patients, and visitors alike all stopped to stare at the spectacle to which they were being treated—the city’s most renowned CEO stalking through a hospital ward, wearing golden pajamas that were somehow finished off with polished business shoes.

Whispers hissed like tiny faucets all around Yellow as the engraved numbering on the doorways increased on either side of her. 

11029.

“That’s her. Yes, I’m sure…”

11030.

“She was in a wreck, I think. Saw it in the news.”

11031.

“Looks like someone’s lit a fire under her ass.”

“Shhhsh!”

Yellow scowled, her fingers twitching irritably by her side, but nonetheless maintained a distinctly cool expression until she arrived at the fifth and equally unassuming door on the right hand side of the corridor.

11037.

The door was incompletely closed, which allowed the soft murmur of the television within to seep beneath the cracks, advertising what sounded like some… some kind of kid’s show with its high pitched voices and jaunty background music. 

For there was a kid on the other side of this door.

A mere child.

And for the first time since she had conceived of this plan—(it was hardly a plan and more of an unsubjugated impulse)—the CEO faltered, staring at the wood blankly. A choice branched before her, the very dimensions of it almost tangible as she simply stood there, on that hard-tiled floor, feeling the bareness of her own self beneath the thin layer of her pajamas, feeling the cold draft of the hospital prickling uncomfortably against the back of her neck.

She could proceed forward into the room and glean something new about her wife.

For that was what it was all about, right?

At the end of the day, at the very end of this infernal world which they had inhabited together for so many years upon years, she was whom her entire life revolved around in all of its many facets.

Blue and Blue and Blue.

(Who was this mysterious boy to give her cause to smile?)

Or, Yellow could cut her losses as they were and let this final door remain unopened; she could walk away and assuredly regroup. Burying her hurts deep beneath her skin, letting them seethe there with all the others, she could tell herself—command herself even—to be satisfied with the outcome of a battle surrendered, her weapons laid down at the threshold of the final gate that was filled with noises from a children’s television program…

Her stiff fingers reached up and gripped the polished door handle, the brass so cold that it simply burned.

And she hesitated a little.

She bit her already cut lip.

She deliberated.

She was deceiving no one but herself.

She had long already made up her mind.

Because Yellow Diamond, for all that her rigidly composed exterior implied, did not know restraint.

She had spent a lifetime and an eternity scaling mountaintops in search of the next highest peak to climb, to conquer, to revel in, to find herself alone upon.

And so, she couldn't stop.

She wouldn't stop now.

She hauled her hand downwards in a singular vicious movement.

She pushed inwards.

And the door slowly opened to a room filled with dying sunlight, orange fractures slivering onto the walls like great, yawning cuts through the slats in the window blinds.

And there, to her left, propped up in the hospital bed, was the boy named Steven, staring at her from widened eyes.

She was shameless, appalled, entirely uncomprehending; she stared at him quite wildly back.

The nakedness of shock electrified the space between them.

After all, she was a stranger who had just bursted into his room without so much as a cursory knock.

And he was—there were no other words for it—a sickly, sickly child, small and emaciated, dwarfed even by the sheets which swathed him. Wires and tubes snaked across his body, invading him all over—his oxygenated nose, his arms, his chest. There were even a few protruding from his blankets. He had curly, black hair and big, brown eyes that were sunken in his face, grooved beneath with purple shadows. 

Her wife wasn’t merely just friends with a sick kid.

(That would have been too simple, too uncomplicated, too convenient for them all.)

No, she was friends with a goddamn corpse.

The thought arrived before comprehension did, and she frowned at herself immediately, scolding.

Sickened.

Steven recovered first, hastily arranging his face into a polite smile that made one of his cheeks look swollen. With a click of his remote, he muted the show he had been watching—some kind of colorful cartoon, which, for unfathomable reasons, featured a crying egg.

Sunny side up.

“Hi,” he ventured; there was tentativeness in his voice but a certain curiosity, too. Yellow glanced to his side and only vaguely comprehended that the sunflowers she had tasked Poppy to send to him were sitting on his rolling side table, haughtily arranged in their vase. She crossed her golden-sleeved arms across her chest defensively and suddenly wished the maid hadn’t made such an appropriate choice in flora.

“Hello,” she returned abruptly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. The room was much like her own, except a little smaller, maybe. Perhaps, though, it was the presence of so many machines hovering around his bedside which offered such an illusion of confinement. They were all hooked up to him in some form or fashion, humming and whirring. “You’re Steven, yes?”

“In the flesh,” he grinned cutely. “Steven Universe to be exact.”

She stared at him incredulously. 

He had to be joking.

“What kind of name is Universe?” 

He stared at her back.

Confused.

A little indignant. 

His button nose scrunched up, quivering the oxygen cannulas.

“Well, I think it’s a good name,” he huffed. “My dad chose it for us.”

“It sounds contrived,” she returned haughtily, sniffing. 

“You’re one to talk! Your name is a pun!”

Steven Universe covered his mouth quickly then, disturbing a nest of wires at they lifted into the air with the rash gesture, but the damage was already done; it was clear, painstakingly obvious, that the boy already knew her name.

“You know who I am then?” She asked sharply, demanding confirmation all the same.

“No!” 

But when Yellow arched a supercilious brow, he broke just as quickly, uncovering his hands from his mouth and letting them fall with a dull thud on top of his blankets. “Well, I mean… not technically… but uh, you’re wearing golden pajamas, and when Blue Diamond dropped by earlier, she said that you’d been in an accident… and it wasn’t difficult to, well”—he peered at her nervously, wincing—“put two and two together… you’re Yellow Diamond, right?”

But Yellow wasn’t really listening any longer.

Because Blue Diamond had dropped by earlier.

She’d been here, talked to him.

Communed.

For some reason she could not entirely rationalize to herself, the thought of it compelled her to want to hit something; she made an awkward, jerking movement, which she only dimly recovered from by leaning her shoulder against the nearest wall, collapsing against it roughly.

“The one and only,” came her affirming reply.

She hardly knew her own voice, how bitter it was and how cruel.

Steven Universe simply stared at her in silence, his mouth parted slightly for a lack of words to say.

vi.

The years scurried forward, dashing across the sands of time with tiny, pattering feet. Pink Diamond became one became three became five in the interim and the rush, her chubby limbs elongating with each passing day that she scampered around the penthouse suite despite her mothers’ protestations—both to the scampering and to the inconceivable idea that she was growing up. She had once been so small, a minuscule bundle in the warm expanses of their arms. But now, the tuft of brown hair which had once barely covered her bald head had bloomed into a spray of curls that framed the sides of her freckle-splattered face, poking up a little at the top. 

She was a funny little creature.

Exceptionally opinionated to be so young.

She liked her ballerina lessons, but she didn’t like her instructor, who she said smelled like socks. She had a bright, high laugh that often threw itself down the echoing halls as her various caretakers chased her down their lengths. Her chosen color was pink independently of her name (though yello’ and bwue were pretty colors, too). She loved dinosaurs—how they stomped and bit and roared. Her favorite foods were chicken nuggets.

And yes, these were obviously shaped like dinosaurs.

The little elf, they all called her: the various employees of the Diamond household, her tutors, her imperial grandmother, her mothers most of all. This was partially because she resembled an elf with her slightly tapered ears and big, mischievous eyes, but it was also a nickname derived from her uncanny knack of getting into places she wasn’t supposed to be: the kitchen cupboards, her mother’s claw-footed wardrobe, her other mother’s study—often hiding beneath the mahogany desk to lie in wait for someone to scare. 

Usually a maid who was cleaning in there, but sometimes, Yellow herself if she could manage.

(Sometimes, amazingly enough, she managed.)

When the then thirty-six year old entered her office one sun-splashed autumn evening, anticipating a call from Hélène Colbert—a high-up ambassador for a steel manufacturing company in France—Yellow made a cursory glance beneath the furniture just to ensure that there was no silently giggling child tucked into the darkness there. But there was nothing—only that secluded strip of carpet and a few dust bunnies the maid had missed during her last sweep through of the study. 

Satisfied, she straightened in her chair and snatched up a nearby pen so as to jot notes on the legal pad she kept on her desk at all times.

It had been a damn good week.

If she could secure an alliance with Colbert, it would be an even better one. The steel company had a plant just off Delmarva’s coast, and if they could work out a reasonable deal, then Diamond Electric would no longer have to import the bulk of their steel supply from a few states away. It would save the company a hell of a lot of cost in overheads, and it’d make the Diamonds that much money more… 

The landline rang just as Yellow scrawled that it was September 30th on the top of a fresh page; her plump lips tipped upwards in a lazy smile as she picked up the receiver.

“Hello? Yellow Diamond, I presume?” The woman had a low, pleasant voice that rolled with her French accent.

“The one and only,” came her confident reply, and the two began to negotiate, back and forth, sparring gracefully with their words, back and forth and around the bend again. If they continued at this pace, Yellow could have an initial affidavit sent to Colbert’s office by morning… hell, she could make one of the interns drive down to Delmarva tonight.

“Thirty-five percent,” Helénè countered.

“My highest offer is twenty,” Yellow volleyed back.

And on and on.

Fifteen minutes in, just as the conversation was becoming less jocund and more argumentative, there was a dull thud against the door.

Plunk.

Yellow’s golden-eyed gazed narrowed as she stared at the diminutive crack beneath the door; a slight shadow played there, moving along the edge.

Perhaps it was that awful cat of Blue’s…. ugly creature… it shed everywhere.

“With all due respect,” the ambassador continued, irritation edging her carefully constructed words,“we would be supplying the steel for your latest line of airliners, which is no mean feat, Mrs. Diamond. We deserve at least thirty percent of the cut.”

“Steel you only manufacture for less than ten percent of the cost it requires for Diamond Electric to actually produce the planes in the first place,” Yellow reminded her smugly.

“That’s—!” Hélène seemed to be rendered temporarily speechless. DE’s accountants had done their due diligence when it came to researching the company.”That’s beside the—“

Plunk.

Plunk.

The door was rattled again—twice. Hélène paused mid-blustering tirade; apparently, this time, she had heard it, too.

“Pardon?”

Plunk.

Plunk.

“Excuse me,” Yellow said shortly, her jaw locking. “Let me just handle this… I won’t be more than a moment—“

Straightening from her chair, Yellow Diamond placed the receiver on her desk and swept to the door in a few magisterial clicks of her heels, wrenching the knob violently. If it was that damned cat again—

It was not the damned cat.

The swinging doorway gave way to none other than Pink Diamond, who was sitting crosslegged on the hardwood floor, a bouncy ball caught between her grubby fingertips, the unmistakable expression of guilt caught between the freckles spanning her face. The triangle of light from the study fanned across her tiny form; she crouched in her mother’s lengthened shadow.

“Pink!” The word pried itself loose from her mouth more harshly than she had intended. (Hélène Colbert was on the line… they were so close to securing a deal… she didn’t have time to deal with childish trifles… her nerves prickled just beneath her skin.) “What are you doing?”

“Playin’!” The child smiled sheepishly, her gapped teeth revealing themselves with the gesture. She lifted the toy and just as abruptly let it go, where it crashed to the floor with a massive plunk. “Ball!”

“Where’s Sonya?” She glanced down the hall, as though expecting the day governess’s tall form to suddenly materialize at the end of it, stammering her obsequious apologies. “Why aren’t you in the playroom?”

Pink tilted her head uncomprehendingly as the ball landed with yet another echoing thud; the cavernous ceilings did little to mitigate the acoustics of the sound.

“I don’ know…”

“Well”—she pinched the bridge of her nose in a concerted effort to stem her annoyance—“go and find her, honey. Momma’s working.”

“But I don’t wanna play with Sonya! I wanna play with you!”

“I can’t—“

“But why, Momma?” The child wheedled.

“I told you,” she said it forcefully—she almost growled it—as though she expected the five-year old to grasp the nuances of a rational refusal. Couldn’t she see that her mother was busy? “I’m working.”

“But—!”

“ Pink, ” she snapped, slamming her hand against the doorframe, “ not now! ”

The child's protestations were snatched into silence.

Horrible, gaping, protracted silence.

And then, there was a tiny sniff.

A trembling lip.

Yellow Diamond realized seconds too late that she had gone too far, had crossed the invisible line between scolding her daughter and yelling at her— scaring her. Pink Diamond’s face reddened immediately, the beginnings of tears standing in her eyes, her tiny chest heaving in the telltale signs that she was about to cry.

“Wait, dammit—Pink, don’t—“ But any words of comfort were stifled in her mouth as Sonya finally came running down the dark hall from the direction of the playroom, her horn-rimmed glasses askew, dark strands of hair falling out of her usually meticulous bun. She scooped the child in her arms, uttering her excuses rapidly between every one of Pink’s awful cries, which were now freely being wept. “—playing hide and go seek… got away from me… so sorry, Mrs. Diamond… won’t happen again.” 

“Sonya. I mean, Pink. I—“

But before she could finish objecting, could explain, could thoroughly justify why she had made her daughter cry, the lithe governess had already pivoted in the opposite direction just as quickly as she had come, stroking Pink’s feathery hair and whispering soft words of consolation against her head, for the child had buried her face in Sonya’s turtleneck.

Like ghosts, they disappeared together around the corner.

And in the resulting quietness, the remaining darkness, Yellow glanced down.

Pink’s bouncy ball remained—red, abandoned, and ultimately harmless now without the agitations of its owner.

She kicked it away to release some of her feelings.

It plunked, plunked, plunked down the empty hall.

Slightly disoriented, irate, her chest prickling, the CEO eventually returned to her study, closing the door behind her with a click and apprehending the receiver again, where Hélène Colbert had waited, her silky voice armed with renewed rebuttals as to why the deal needed to be renegotiated. They sparred, and they fought, and Yellow unsheathed the best and worst that her blunt tongue had to offer.

And when they finally closed half-an-hour later, with Hélène swallowing twenty-five percent as pleasantly as she could manage without breaking the decorum of her own forced politeness, Yellow Diamond poured herself a celebratory glass of Moscato and reminded herself that she deserved it.

Pink was only a child.

She couldn’t possibly understand…

One day, though…

When she was older…

vii.

The silence staggered thin between the two of them for what seemed like an infinity, and within its breadth, for the first time since she’d woken up that morning in an unfamiliar bed, Yellow wanted to collapse beneath the weight of her own tiredness.

She was exhausted.

She was always exhausted.

When had there ever been a moment, in four goddamn years, when she had not been a corpse cruelly animated by the beating of a heart that was exhausted—spent, empty, irreparably, irretrievably drained?

Her entire body was the bruise that she leaned all her weight upon simply by standing upright as she met Steven Universe’s shy gaze in that crowded hospital room. The wall propped her up, rescued her, preserved what was left of her fragmented dignity; fleetingly, she thought of Blue Diamond’s silver cane.

“So…” Yellow hesitated, reluctant, unsure, lingeringly bitter. She attempted to subjugate these vulnerabilities into a voice that only barely managed to pass as level. “… my wife came by.”

She supposed, in the end, that it wasn’t this child’s fault that her marriage was on the brink of dissolution.

And so she concluded, if this indeed was the case, that she frankly couldn’t hold it against him.

(For the most part.)

“Not for very long,” Steven offered quickly, as though he thought that would help. “She looked really tired… she said she’d been in your room all night.”

It wasn’t lost upon Yellow Diamond how remarkable of an image that must have been: Blue sitting by her side—diligent, solemn, studiously concerned, her silvery brow skimming the tops of her oceanic eyes. For years, it had precisely been the other way around with them, the vigils she had observed by her wife’s calcified form long and unbroken. The sun would spread its arms around the morning sky, washing pink across Yellow’s weary face in gentle, ritual greeting. She would get up then, from the hardback chair where she sometimes sat, and begin her day anew: drink a cup of coffee, arm herself in a three piece suit, make business calls, go to the office, and call Livia constantly throughout the day for updates. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Sometimes, she would kiss Blue’s wrinkled forehead before she left.

Other times, she couldn’t bear to so much as look at her.

Acid would rise up the column of her throat.

Anger would scrape her fingers into fists.

Resentment.

It simply poisoned her.

Rinse, wash, repeat.

“I see,” Yellow returned unimpressively, glancing downwards; there was a scuff mark on one of her shoes, aberrant and unfathomable. (There were so many scuff marks across the neatly polished contours of her life; she could see every one of them clearly now, how they pulsed, how they bled, how they so inexorably bruised.)

Steven shifted in the bed as much as the tubes encumbering him would allow.

She looked up again.

“Blue also said you hadn’t been injured too badly… but I’m really sorry you were hurt in the first place.”

He paused uncertainly; the silence limped forward between them; it dared to approach.

The child had big eyes, brown and rather deep, even though they were sunken in unnatural hollows.

Pink’s eyes had been brown, too, chocolate smooth.

Playful and mischievous and kind.

The parallel did not invite comfort.

She would never see her daughter again.

“Are… are you okay?” He asked, his voice soft.

Tender.

It extended a warm hand across the silence between them; it tried to breach the gap. And this, above all, was the most inscrutable behavior to the practically minded businesswoman. This, above all else, simply galled her. Steven Universe didn't know her. In the three minutes since she had arrived here, she'd done nothing more than rudely abused his name, and still, he tried to breach the gap. Still, he was kind.

“You look like you’re... tired.”

“What’s it to you?” Yellow shot back instinctively, the words forsaking her before restraint held them back. Ashamed, irritated, weary, exhausted—she was always exhausted—she rubbed a chastising hand across her mouth, the heel of her palm rough against her lips. “I mean—shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? You don’t appear so rosy yourself.”

Even though she had just insulted him (again), Steven laughed, his bright eyes cutting through the gray flatness of the room. 

“Maybe not,” he grinned, “but that’ll change soon enough… I’m getting kidneys today!”

He puffed his chest out proudly.

His smile, incredibly enough, widened.

And in that moment, his joy, his happiness, his unburdened, unmitigated relief was almost so tangible, that Yellow Diamond could barely stand to look at it. Painted in broad strokes all over his sunken face, it was impossible to miss. 

Dying, somehow, he was the most alive entity in the room.

“You are?”

“Yup,” he laughed—exuberant, simply radiant. It was simply spilling from him now. “We just got the news this morning. Dr. M—she’s my nephrologist—she’s gone to get them… oh, but you wouldn’t know Dr. M… Dr. Maheswaran, I mean. She’s really…”

He babbled on.

It was inconceivable to Yellow Diamond—downright unfathomable—that he could be so buoyant and light, ensnared by so many running tubes and wires as he was, buried beneath them, dependent upon them, trapped. She tried to comprehend how he could nurse such pure emotions in a world that had been nothing but unkind to him. Always a rationalist, even to the bitter end of a universe which made no sense, she attempted to understand how anyone could still find it in themselves to be so good.

But when comprehension failed her—as it so rarely didn’t—she itched to be away from him.

The feeling swelled in her chest.

It choked her.

And yet, the woman couldn’t look away either, drawn, magnetized, inexplicably compelled like a flower leaning towards the sun, bent towards its light and warmth.

Was this what Blue Diamond had sought when she had befriended Steven Universe—this travesty of a human, this mere child?

Was she, too, looking for some of his sunshine to grasp onto, to bask in, to claim and call her own? 

And if this hypothesis had merit—as so many of her hypotheses often did—then how could Blue Diamond possibly stand it?

(Blue, who had stretched out in the darkness of their unshared room for so long. Blue, who had decomposed in a bier of a bed that had been made for two. Blue, whose long face was lined with weary shadows. Blue, who was but a mere shadow herself. Insubstantial. Spectral. Going but never entirely gone.)

Steven Universe’s face, the very expression in it, was sunshine.

It was unbearable.

It was irresistible.

And it was unmistakable most of all.

Tenderness and goodness and an eruption of kindling, all-encompassing warmth—they had long evaded Yellow Diamond’s searching grasp, and now they stared at her openly, from the face of a small child in a hospital bed. 

He smiled at her, and somehow, the very act of it was miraculous.

Because he, too, had been wrung out by the machinations of the world—he, too, knew its cruel hands, its ceaselessly grinding gears—and somehow, even still, he smiled.

The thought came to her, unbidden, that she once knew a child who would have done the same.

“Everyone’s so happy,” Steven finished, slumping backwards in his bed. It appeared as though the simple act of talking had worn him out.

The heart monitor on the wall fluttered a little more rapidly than sounded normal.

“And I’m also happy… and a little sad… but happy at the same time.” His brow furrowed as though it, too, was confused by the contradiction of emotions he was seemingly experiencing.

He coughed into the back of his hand, and the sound was rather terrible; it wrenched his entire body in a convulsive motion.

Yellow stared at him baldly while he caught his breath.

“I get the happiness,” she returned bluntly. (She didn’t really get it at all, but she wanted to—she was desperate to—and perhaps that made up for some of the difference.) “But why the sadness?”

He was going to get to live, and so that was the end all, be all, was it not?

Herein marked the end of his struggles?

Forever and ever—amen?

But the boy’s expression suddenly became modest again; he glanced away, a dull pink just barely layering itself over his cheeks which had ever so slightly paled further from when he had coughed.

“Well… I mean, everything happy is always a little sad, too, isn’t it?” He asked, and it was clear from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t particularly looking for an answer. “S-someone… died, so I could get their kidneys… and I guess… you know… that’s something to be sad about, even when I can be happy at the same time.”

Yellow Diamond hadn't expected this.

In all the tortured imaginations she had given to the faceless boy over the past couple of days, agonizing over who he was, and tormenting herself over what could be so special about him, and half-convincing herself that there was probably nothing really extraordinary about him at all, she hadn’t anticipated—in all her haste, her haughtiness, her great offense—to be proven wrong.

Because the words he had just spoken complicated everything she had hoped to confirm in the child.

For he was sage beyond his years.

His face looked as though as it was about a hundred years old.

He seemed to understand, in a more intimate way than Yellow had ever grasped in an entire lifetime, that emotions were not binaries, nor were they monoliths unto themselves.

It was entirely possible, Steven Universe said, to be happy and sad at exactly the same time.

It was possible, Poppy Aurelia had implied, to be neither good nor bad but some mixture in-between. 

It was human, very likely, to experience so many things all at once: grief and joy and aching relief and horror and kindness and sadness and warmth.

Perhaps then, it was conceivable… rational even… that she could worship the very ground her wife walked upon and still be angry with her.

She could be goddamned relieved that she was doing better and equally bitter that it hadn’t been because of her.

She could love Blue Diamond and wonder why she hadn’t been enough.

Why they hadn't been.

The realization staggered her.

Simply undid her.

And perhaps the naked emotion must have shown across her face because Steven winced, as though he had perceived he had done something wrong.

“I’m sorry… was that too much?” He asked, averting his eyes. “I know that’s kinda, like, weird to think about.”

“No,” Yellow Diamond replied immediately, and she was surprised to discover that her voice wasn’t entirely unkind.

Her lips jerked.

It wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t quite a frown either.

“No…” She repeated distantly, and somehow, the sound became softer in the ensuing echo. “It wasn’t too much at all.”

In fact, maybe, just maybe, it had precisely been enough.

“D’you want to sit down?” He asked softly, inclining his head towards the empty chair next to his bed. “I don’t think my folks’ll be back for a bit…”

His smile was its own invitation.

It tilted lopsided across his mouth.

Yellow hesitated, and she chewed on it, and she ultimately shook her head, inadvertently loosening a crick in her stiff neck.

“Well," she said dryly, "I suppose I have nothing else better to do.”

Blast him and damn him, Steven Universe simply beamed.

viii.

“Here, Starlight.” Extending a skeletal hand from the swaths of woolen blankets covering her lap, White Diamond pressed a handful of quarters into her granddaughter’s outstretched palm. Caught by the stark, gray light leaning in from the window, the matriarch’s complexion seemed especially frail and powdery next to the thirteen-year old’s smooth, unbroken skin. “Take these and buy yourself something interesting from the vending machine.”

“Thank you, Gran,” Pink returned hastily, flustered, flushing, pleasantly surprised. She, like her mother, had expected this visit to comprise of White lecturing her over the tiniest details: her dyed hair, the length of her shorts, the couple of piercings running up the length of her ear. But instead, she was being handed a readymade out after only ten minutes of being informed that she needed to buy clothes that didn’t have artistic tears in them. Her fingers flashed to a close on top of the coins before she unceremoniously shoved them in the back pocket of her “too-scant, hardly appropriate, vaguely promiscuous” shorts, where they jangled next to each other with a telltale clink.

“Just avoid the crackers, darling. They’re awfully stale.” White’s darkly painted lips curled upwards in an encouraging smile. “And take care not to choose anything too sugary either. Heaven knows the damage you could wreak upon your teeth.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pink grinned—(her grandmother didn’t catch the implicit sarcasm)—before she flounced off, the heels of her red sneakers clipping against the tiled floor with each exuberant movement.

A door opened, and a door just as abruptly closed, and the cheerful footsteps died down the hall, leaving Yellow Diamond alone with her eighty-two year old mother.

There was silence then.

Strained.

Fraught.

And a wordless tango that only the two of them knew. 

They stared at each other coldly, appraising each other without so much as saying a single word—one sitting stiffly in a fancily upholstered armchair, while the other somehow wore her wheelchair like a throne. The matriarch’s bony elbows rested judiciously upon the armrests, fingers templed delicately beneath her pointed chin. Her spiked hair was combed back in its usual fashion, voluminous and almost wild looking, rather like the mane of a lion. 

It was an impressive effect—it always was with White Diamond—marred only by the unexpected context of her surroundings. Ritzy though the Spire certainly was—by plebeian standards anyway—it was still an assisted living home, and because it was an assisted living home, because it implied age and dependence and a lack of self-possession, it was an affront to the founder and former CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Desultory to the regal majesty with which she had always comported herself.

Offensive.

“I was beginning to believe you had forgotten me,” White began, the sugar in her voice acquiring a crystallized edge. “What has it been? Two weeks? Three? Forgive me for not knowing the intimate details, dear. Senility, you know.”

“Please,” Yellow rolled her eyes. “Spare me the histrionics, Mother. This is a temporary arrangement until—“

But White interrupted sharply, breaking the bond of her hands to wave one airily. “Until my physician concurs that I have fully recovered from an incident that I could have perfectly rehabilitated from in the comforts of my own manor. Yes, I am well aware.”

Nine weeks ago, she had stroked out and only barely survived to complain about the tale. She laid in a hospital bed for weeks upon weeks. It had only been luck, if such serendipity existed in an unthinking, unfeeling world, that the maid was cleaning that day, that she’d found her employer stretched out across the marbled floor in the kitchen.

The line of Yellow’s pursed lips thinned.

“You’re being too cavalier,” she said bluntly, shifting a little in her chair. “You almost died.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t, and now I’m here, and my own daughter can hardly spare a moment from her schedule to visit her poor mother in the nursing home she consigned her to.”

“Your doctor recommended—“ She began hotly.

“My doctor, wuss that he is,” White cut across her again, her thin nostrils flaring ever so slightly, “indicated that the fate of my whereabouts rested in your capable hands, and I see that you have chosen to wash them both free of me, a Pontius Pilate arranged in an Armani suit. How charmingly novel.”

Each word was expertly chosen, a weapon drenched in syrup so sweet, that to swallow it, was saccharine.

Silence simmered between them again, electric like exposed wires seething through the air. 

They challenged each other with nothing more than their eyes.

They waged a quiet war.

And Yellow lost.

Spectacularly.

A recurring theme when it came to her mother.

“I’ll arrange for you to be sent home tomorrow,” she folded, her voice clipped, almost petulant. Her arms covered her chest so tightly that she imagined she was leaving an impression exactly upon the spot where they laid.

“Thank you,” White returned, equally curt. “That is all I have asked for.”

Then cut.

End scene. 

Cue the curtain descending upon a familiar stage.

This was how appointments with her mother usually concluded after all, with her asserting the final word and Yellow tucking tail to run, hide, nurse her shining wounds, and pretend that they had never been inflicted in the first place come the next morning.

But then, complicating everything that Yellow had ever known about her, upending every assumption she had ever made in forty-four years of having been her daughter, White Diamond did something quite unexpected.

She sighed, the sound filtering thinly through her nostrils.

It was just a sigh, but it was also an implicit gesture of vulnerability.

An admission to weakness from a woman who had marketed her entire persona upon being impenetrable.

And the both of them knew it.

Rather than acknowledge it, though, White glanced away immediately, staring out into the wide window which stood next to her wheelchair. The pale light gently touched her face, bringing the lines etched into those leathery folds into starker definition. Countless botox injections and cosmetic surgeries had not entirely worked their magic, for Yellow saw, in that protracted moment—viscerally understood—that her mother was getting old, if she was not considered old already.

The thought gripped her.

Inexplicably stung.

On top of her blankets, the ridges of the matriarch’s bony fingers trembled slightly against an invisible cold.

“Mother…?”

“Starlight is getting so tall these days,” White murmured, as though Yellow hadn’t said anything at all. “You were tall, too, when you were her age, I believe… but you always slumped your shoulders, dear, and it detracted from the effect. I scolded you when I caught you at it.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the autumnal day collapsed down Yellow’s rigid spine. She had never once, in so many unflappable years, ever heard her mother engage in nostalgia, an emotion she had always more or less derided to be regressive.

Looking backwards, after all, distracted from the now.

White’s ebony gaze never left the window, though she continued to speak, her voice ever sharp but somehow, simultaneously distant .

Detached.

As though the two women, scarcely four feet apart though they were, occupied two different realms of existence.

“I scolded you tor so many trifles, Yellow,” she went on, giving no visual indication that she remembered her daughter was in the room. “Your grades, your occasionally taciturn personality, the very way you spoke sometimes, fearing naturally that your youthful shortcomings would reflect upon our hallowed name.”

“Mother,” she tried again.

Yellow wanted it to stop.

For nearly five decades, their relationship had been a contract that they had both meticulously observed, and now, before her very eyes, White Diamond was ripping it cleanly asunder.

She was looking back, and she was sighing.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go; this wasn't how their world turned.

“You don’t have to—“

“And maybe,” White Diamond hummed, the sound glasslike, almost fragile in that light filled room, “I scolded you too often. I instituted so many boundaries upon your life and nary gave you a means to shake them… goodness knows I likely didn’t intend you to… you are, after all, everything I ever dreamed in a progeny—successful, confident, shining… but I wonder… mmm, I suppose… no… no…”

She trailed off then.

The words fell emptily to the ground and laid, injured, at her slipper-enclosed feet.

Yellow Diamond attempted to pick them up the best that she could, though they shivered in her palms.

“You did your best, Mother,” she said, her voice strained.

Small.

She almost felt like a child again, standing outside her mother’s study, hoping to be let in.

“That counts for something, yes?”

There was a pleading note in her voice.

She loathed it.

She despised herself.

She had long since convinced herself she didn’t need her mother’s approval to illuminate the successes of her life, and yet, here she was—forty-odd years later, still begging for it, nearly on her hands and knees to get it.

White Diamond sighed again, the gesture infinitesimal. She never quite divorced her eyes from the window. Mist swirled across the flat expanse just beyond the glass, smoking the world beyond it silver, shroud gray.

“You should take a day off every now and then,” she only replied. “Accompany Starlight to buy less vixen-like clothes. Perhaps arrange a vacation between the three of you. Paris is always lovely in the fall.”

It was unexplainable, even to herself, but anger suddenly seared her chest as she realized what White was driving at.

“Mother—“

But before she could continue, before she could defend herself against White Diamond’s unsubtle accusations, before she could point out the hypocrisy of it all coming from her of all people, the door opened again. Pink came back in laughing—she was always laughing—boasting of her acquisition of the last pack of gummies in the vending machine.

And in all the commotion, washed beneath the noise, Yellow almost didn’t catch the words that slipped from the side of White Diamond's pinched mouth.

“Maybe I should have taken you to Paris, too.”

ix.

The adjustment from the wall to the chair next to Steven's bed came with no small relief, her body reveling in the sensation of finally being able to rest her tired bones. For Yellow, admit it though she never would, had overexerted herself, had walked too long and stood for even longer. As subtly as she could manage, she massaged the outer part of her right thigh where it had struck the side of the door during the wreck.

Without really knowing it, she knew—almost certainly—that the impact had left a bruise.

(Oh, well.)

(It could join all the rest—the contusions and scrapes and cuts and aberrant scuff marks.)

(Just another quantity more in the collection of open wounds that made up her life, that haunted it, haunted her.)

Careful not to disturb any of the lines and tubes which tethered him to so many humming machines, Steven Universe painstakingly twisted his tiny body to stare at her through the rails of his hospital bed.

And Yellow Diamond stared at him just as intensely back.

And somehow, quite instinctively, she gleaned the impression that he pitied her.

She shrunk uncomfortably beneath the emotion.

Protestation immediately sprang to her defense.

But in the end, he was kind; he only asked her a simple question.

“You sent me those flowers, didn’t you?”

With a small smile, he tilted his head to the tray which now stood directly in front of Yellow, where honeyed light from the window caught the petals of so many sunflowers crowded in a blue vase. She cursed Poppy once again for choosing such a metaphorically apt arrangement; she despised, viscerally, how one of the flowers seemed to drip below its peers, its long neck broken.

Hopeless.

Pathetic.

“And what of it?” She asked stiffly. Irascibility remained her go-to safeguard against uncomfortable questions, all those pesky, prying things. “That’s simply what you do when someone is in the hospital. You send flowers. You tell them to get well.”

But, once again, Steven was brighter than she had initially given him credit for because his rebuttal was such that even the Zircons couldn’t have refuted it, prodigious at making counterarguments though they were.

“Sure,” he grinned, mischievous, shit-eating. His dark eyes twinkled with his own playfulness. “But that’s not really something you do for total strangers, right?"

No, no in fact, it was not.

Damn him.

“At ease, Sherlock,” Yellow scoffed, simply fuming. She half-hated this child still. She crossed her arms over her chest and felt as though she would never unbend them from her stony frame again. “You only received them because of your relationship to my wife, of what you mean to her.”

But even the very mention of Blue Diamond did something to her, transformed her in the instant it took to articulate her existence.

Her golden eyes softened.

Her hands clenched on top of her lap.

And she was weak; she almost felt indecent; she glanced away.

“You mean a lot to her,” Yellow shrugged, hesitant, almost childish. It was childish to talk about one's emotions in such a bald way. “And that, in return, means something to me.”

She could feel his dark eyes settle upon her, sensed the intensity of them, the quiet warmth, and once again, the hackles of all her best self-defenses attempted to stir to her aid, dull anger writhing in the pit of her stomach.

She stared outside the window, at the indigo drapes that were pulling themselves over an orange sky, and tried to master herself.

She returned her gaze to the sunflowers almost against her will.

And found yet another thing to hate about the whole arrangement.

How the vase was midnight blue.

“You... you mean a lot to her, too, you know,” Steven whispered. Each word fought to be heard over the sounds of the many machines which kept him alive, but still, they fought; they ached to be heard. “She loves you… she’s just… she’s—”

“What?” Yellow pounced upon the words harshly. She clung to every last one of them as though they promised the secrets of the universe in their hesitant syllables. She didn't even attempt to strangle her question into a murmur to match Steven's own.

She was desperate.

Craven.

Blue Diamond loves me, but what?

What unspoken things remained in the gulf between them? (There were so many, likely too many to ever really surmount.)

What final barrier tore their collective world asunder?

(Was it Pink? Was it grief? Was it Yellow herself? Perhaps, simply enough, it was everything; it was all.)

Steven was gentle, almost apologetic, as he proffered an answer.

"She's... forgotten how to say it, I think," he said. "And she's trying... she's really trying... to remember how."

It was three mere words.

They were trite and cliché; every child knew them.

I and love and you.

And yet, for the first time in four years, Yellow understood her wife perfectly; she knew that it could hardly be as uncomplicated as that.

For it was those same three words that never came easy, even if they were said, even if they were masterfully articulated.

Because love was not a string of syllables.

It was not a phrase, nor a trivial, commercialized thing.

It was bigger than that, grander and more terrible.

More inconceivably profound than three words could ever possibly hope to suggest.

Love was action.

It was light and touch and sound.

I and love and you.

"I love her too." The words came before Yellow Diamond ever really registered them; they seized at her constricted sternum; they eviscerated her raw throat.

"... but you've forgotten how to say it," Steven finished for her.

Yes.

But she couldn't bring herself to admit it, so she nodded thickly, and somehow knew, from the way that he smiled sadly at her, that Steven Universe understood.

x.

Dusk fell through the high window in Yellow’s study in strange shafts of amber light, illuminating the stack of papers she was attempting to decipher in the growing dimness. Her readers sliding down the edge of her nose, her mouth moved soundlessly to the heavy cadence of the words, the words, the words—but her tiredness unmoored her; her comprehension only barely kept pace with the speed with which her eyes skimmed the long sentences. So it was a relief when a faint knock at the door gave her a tailored excuse to set the damn thing down for a brief moment. 

Indeed, she was so glad not to be reading a dense passage on consumer statistics, that she forgot to sound irate at being interrupted.

“Come in,” she called, her voice hoarse from hours of disuse.

Obligingly, the heavy door creaked inwards, and there, in the triangle of light thrown forwards by the lamp on Yellow’s desk, stood Pink Diamond in that ratty, old hoodie that Blue so despised, a pencil caught in her feathery pink hair, an apologetic smile caught on her lips. She had only recently turned seventeen a few weeks ago, and for some reason, right then and there, it struck Yellow Diamond that it absolutely showed. 

Gone were the traces of baby fat from the girl’s heart shaped face, replaced by a certain angularity which bore the trace distinctions of pride, confidence, and the beginnings of a distinct ego. Gone were the gapped teeth that had defined many of the photos from her childhood. Gone were the awkwardly lanky limbs that had made her so self-conscious during her tween years; as she entered the office, her movements were graceful, shaped by all those years of ballerina lessons. She walked on the tips of her toes, gliding silently across the wooden slats.

Her daughter had grown up somewhere in the rush of so many years.

And somehow, it had escaped the woman’s attendant notice.

Was it not just yesterday that she had fit perfectly in Yellow’s arms, cooing at her softly through the darkness?

Was it really today that she presented herself before her mother as a young woman, so close to becoming an adult and simultaneously so far from actually being one?

Pink broke the trance first by collapsing into the armchair in front of Yellow’s desk, pulling her spindly legs up from the floor, so that she could cross them. There was a My Little Pony bandage on her left knee where she had only recently scraped herself trying to shave.

For some reason that she couldn’t entirely articulate to herself, the presence of it soothed the businesswoman.

Reassured her, perhaps, that there were some parts of the child who still remained.

“Well, Mother,” Pink sighed heartily, “I’ve finished my History essay. Can I go to Carmen’s party now?”

Carmen Luíz, as Yellow knew, was both a classmate of Pink’s at the private school she attended and the daughter of two wealthy business executives who were highly reputed in all the important social circles as parents who let their underaged daughter throw raucous parties in their manor on Wide Island any time they found it upon themselves to celebrate their wealth by taking vacations.

They often celebrated their wealth.

Yellow exhaled through her nose and returned to her papers; the paragraph on statistics hadn’t become any less incomprehensible in the couple of seconds it had taken for Pink to ask her asinine question.

“My answer hasn’t changed since the last time,” she returned, her voice clipped as she adjusted her readers, pushing them back on her nose. “You know my position on parties.”

“But—“ 

“But nothing, Pink.” Yellow never entirely looked up, uncapping her favorite red pen to make a few scratch marks on the packet. They were less in the service of productivity than they were the illusion of it. “My word is final.”

Pink fell silent; she knew better than to cross her mother’s carefully drawn lines so late at night; instead, she picked sullenly at one of her mismatched socks, the pink one with patterns of roses embroidered across the cloth.

Yellow scowled, partially in response to the particularly dense sentence she was trying to divine meaning from, and partially because she hated when her daughter grew taciturn. It was a tactic which worked well enough on Blue when Blue was feeling merciful, but she, on the other hand, had as much tolerance for moping as she did country music—which was to say little all.

“Is there anything else you needed?” She asked pointedly, glancing up once more. “I’m rather busy—”

But her daughter’s dark eyes had shifted away, her ever veering attention suddenly caught by a point of interest somewhere just behind Yellow’s shoulder. Yellow followed her gaze slowly and immediately understood that she was staring at the photograph perched on the shelf there; the sunset caught the edges of the silver frame and swept an orange hue over the subject it contained.

With a faint jolt in her stomach, she recognized it at once—a picture of White Diamond holding Pink on her third birthday. The two of them were sidled together in an armchair, the toddler sitting on her grandmother’s lap. White looked ever impeccable in a stunning black jumpsuit, which was cinched at her tiny waist with a silver belt. She wrapped her bare arms around Pink and placed the point of her sharp chin atop of that abundant spray of brown curls.

Meanwhile, Pink was laughing in the image, her childlike exuberance radiating across the space of so many elapsed years, her face covered in what looked like the vestiges of chocolate cake.

A smile that was remarkably genuine pulled at the corners of White Diamond’s black lips.

Somehow, amazingly enough, her eyes creased pleasantly beneath all the botox.

It was the happiest Yellow had ever seen her own mother, and perhaps that was why she kept the reminder in her study.

It was a testament to the damn near miracle that the woman hadn't entirely been made of ice and burnished steel.

That she had loved—incrementally, sparingly, meticulously—in the best way that she knew how.

“Gran,” Pink murmured, a small smile threatening to disturb her freckles. “I’d forgotten she always wore a lot of eyeliner.”

“When I was younger,” Yellow returned slyly, “she used to inform me that there was no point in putting on makeup unless it was to create an intimidating effect.”

“Which explains the black lipstick,” Pink laughed, miming the act of drawing a smile across her lips with an invisible tube.

“Precisely.” Her own laugh was like a bark, short and rather blunt. Amusement climbed up her chest and nostalgia—the press of so many memories in the span of a handful of seconds.

But then, to her horror, there was a lump in her throat that had nothing to do with either emotion.

White Diamond had only died a year ago, but sometimes, only sometimes, the fact of it still caught Yellow off guard when she was least expecting it. 

It had been her time.

Assuredly.

Absolutely.

She had been eighty-five.

She had had another stroke.

But still, the woman—her mother—for all her many faults, had always been there—the stubbornly unyielding presence at her shoulder.

Unshakeable.

Invincible.

Some days, it registered with Yellow a little more forcibly than usual that she would never pick up the phone again to be treated to a forty-five minute lecture on production inefficiencies at Diamond Electric.

And more often than not, this realization did not come on the heels of relief.

“It’s weird,” Pink said quietly, voicing what her mother had silently been thinking, “but sometimes, I kinda forget that she’s gone, you know? She only dropped by so rarely… it’s almost like she could still be vacationing in Rome, Milan, Tokyo, or any of her other favorite wine spots.”

She had many favorite wine spots.

“Yes, well”—with some effort, Yellow pulled her head back to its forward position—“that feeling goes away eventually.”

She tried to glance down at her packet again.

The words glittered malevolently beneath the lamp.

“I mean,” Pink pressed softly, “I don’t know… it’s kind of comforting to think she’s still out there somewhere, right? I-I know she’s not, but, like—“

“You’re right,” she returned flatly. “She’s not…”

The dismissal in her voice was clear.

She dared to glance up again and saw that an embarrassed flush had scrawled itself across Pink’s cheeks. But this time, the teenager obediently unfolded from her seat, stretching her limbs high over her head before bringing them down by her sides.

“Yeah… I’m just being silly,” she said, glancing away. “I’m going to go see if Mom’ll edit my essay for me. My conclusion paragraph’s shit.”

“I wouldn’t count on it, dear.” Yellow penned yet another useless mark on her paper. “You know how she feels about plagiarism.”

“True,” Pink smirked, regaining some of her youthful jauntiness, “but she hates the idea of me making anything less than an A even more.”

“Touché.”

The door opened and then closed once again, leaving Yellow Diamond alone in an office full of dusk and dust and thin, fading light. With as much delicacy as she could spare in the silent seconds that followed, she replaced her pen on top of her desk and templed her hands lightly on top of her stomach, breathing in deeply.

Exhaling harshly through her nose.

Perhaps it was the rationalist in her—militant, rigid, almost unfailingly correct—who took no comfort from the fantasy that her dead mother was still somewhere in the world, enjoying a fruity cocktail, smiling lazily beneath a European sun.

Or perhaps it was the pain which such an image inexplicably wrought.

Subtle, though sharp to even prod.

For there was no comfort in death, no assuaging its keen sting.

There was only the coldness of its reality, the aching bitterness, the confrontation of an unassailable truth...

But perhaps she had been premature in teaching Pink that.

Perhaps she had been too hasty in preventing her from holding on to one last childish daydream more.

After all, the seventeen-year old had plenty of time to grow up—to learn, to know, to intimately understand that the world turned viciously, perpetuating its endless cycles over and over again—recapitulating them.

It turned and turned and turned.

And sometimes, all they could do was turn with it.

[ineloqueent]

Hello! I would like to ask for fluff with Joe since you haven’t written for him yet. How about Joe dating/flirting with someone way more quiet and shy than him? A shy! Reader

here’s some fluffy joe for you! i’ve made y/n into a bit of a bookworm, because i’m a bit of one myself, oops. hope you enjoy :)

⭒

Joe had been the first person in your life to understand that being shy wasn’t mutually exclusive with not wanting to be spoken to, that you were human, and craved connection as much as anybody else.

You’d first encountered him at the local hybrid cafe-bookshop, Paracosm. Perhaps that was why you’d been a little more at ease than usual, that day; you knew the place. Paracosm was your favourite haunt, filled with the familiar comforts of tea and yellowed pages, the glittering light bulbs that hung from the ceiling like little planets and kept the atmosphere of the cafe cosy, even on the coldest of days.

Or perhaps it’d been the look of kindliness about him, the slight ginger tint to his hair, the snow dusting his eyelashes, the way he’d shivered and shared a laugh at his own expense with the barista. It was a beautiful quality, to be able to laugh at oneself.

Or maybe it was none of those things at all, and instead simply that he’d smiled at you when he had accidentally made eye contact with you, instead of hurriedly looking away, as most people— including you— did.

“I should’ve worn a warmer jacket, I think,” he said conversationally, and with a start, you realised he’d been talking to you.

Your first thought was why? Why was he speaking to you?

You were sitting by the door, yes, in the spot where you normally did, because the way the bookshelves were positioned by the table ensured that no draft would sweep over you, but just because you were closest to him… Was that why he had directed his remark to you, in polite resolve of the mistake he’d make in looking at you earlier? Or was he speaking to you because he wanted to speak to you?

No, of course not.

But he was still smiling at you, almost expectantly, as though he thought you would reply.

“Wrong day to wear a thin jacket,” you said, and your tonelessness could have been mistaken for hostility. You cursed yourself inwardly; it wasn’t hostility, it was nerves. Admittedly, the man was attractive, and as you already struggled with small talk in the company of people you knew, talking to this auburn-haired stranger turned your words more nonsensical than normal.

But he laughed again, lightly, easily. He had an easiness about him, a simplicity that boasted earnesty and depth, both wit and charm. “You’re right,” he said, simply. “But you look like the clever sort.”

You blinked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” you said.

The memory of a smile remained on his face as he told the barista, “A latte for me,” glanced in your direction, then added, “and another hot chocolate for the lady, please.”

Your expression turned further puzzled, and the man said to you, “Mind if I sit down?”

He’d said it so kindly, as though he genuinely cared that you would not be bothered by him taking the seat across from you.

“No,” you managed, “sit down.”

He pulled out the chair and sat down, made as though to take off his coat, then changed his mind, instead wrapping it more tightly around himself.

“You’re reading Shakespeare,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“You’re reading Shakespeare,” he repeated, and you glanced down at your book.

You were reading Shakespeare, but as to why that was relevant, you couldn’t guess.

“And?”

He shrugged. “Call me simple-minded, but if you’re reading Shakespeare for fun, you have to be some kind of smart. You can’t read between the lines if you’re not smart, and most of Shakespeare is between the lines, not in them.”

Pulling your book closer to you, you challenged shyly, “How do you know I’m reading for fun?”

You noticed, as you leveled your gaze on him, that his eyes were a lovely brown, the kind of colour one might wish to sink into, merely to fathom a whisper of the warmth that lay within them. “You were smiling at the book when I came in.”

He’d noticed you even before you’d seen him.

How often did that happen?

The answer was never. You were one to shrink into the corner, preferring to deflect most attention, and careful observation was your greatest asset in this world of loud-talkers and scatter-brained thinkers. You imagined that nothing about you drew the eye.

But you’d drawn his.

A flush touched your cheeks. “That’s embarrassing,” you muttered. You were only half-joking.

That smile was back on his face again.

“I’m Joe,” he said, reaching out to shake your hand.

“Y/N,” you responded quietly, taking his hand. His skin was soft.

“Joe! Latte and a hot chocolate.”

Joe raised his eyebrows at you, then went to retrieve the drinks. Returning, he set down the hot chocolate in front of you.

“You really didn’t have to do that,” you said, avoiding his eyes.

“Oh, but I wanted to,” he winked. “Gotta make a good first impression.”

Your book was a refuge as you glanced down again, the reliable pattern of black lettering stamped into creamy paper offering you familiarity in this unfamiliar situation. You weren’t used to this… interest.

“And anyway,” he resumed, “what I meant to say was, that’s not embarrassing,” he jammed a finger in the direction of your book, “but the fact that I know how to recite the entirety of Macbeth backwards is.”

“Backwards?” you couldn’t help but laugh. “Why do you know how to recite the entirety of Macbeth backwards?”

Joe winced. “See, that’s the embarrassing bit.”

You raised your eyebrows, and with a heavy sigh, he continued.

“It was a bet. I was being stupid and thought it would be a good idea to bet my friend a hundred dollars that I could memorise any play within a week.”

“Okay, that does sound a bit embarrassing,” you conceded. “But still, why backwards?”

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there,” he said, blowing over the surface of his latte, gingerly taking a sip. He recoiled when it was still too hot, wrinkling his nose in an adorably childish manner. “Backwards, because my friend decided to teach me a lesson for being an idiot, and one-upped me that I should learn it backwards. Before I knew it, there was an entire bar-full of strangers chanting for me to do it, on pain of death if I refused.”

You laughed, finally slipping your fingers from your book, closing it gently with the bookmark inside, your attention captured by how this man told stories in such a lively way, the lilt of his voice akin to how one would narrate a fairytale.

“Go on, then,” you said, trying your hot chocolate. It was perfect, as ever. Perhaps a little more so because it hadn’t come out of your weekly budget. And because it had been paid for by a handsome stranger, one who actually wanted to talk to you. “I want to hear some backwards Macbeth.”

Joe’s eyes twinkled. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I do,” you answered. But you didn’t, really. And he knew it.

He narrowed his eyes.

When you didn’t flinch beneath his gaze, he began, “Despair thy charm, and let the angel whom thou still hast served. Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.” Here, he changed his voice to represent the change in speaker, and you smothered a laugh in your hands at how dramatic his facial expression had become. “Thou losest labor as easy mayst thou the intrenchant air with thy keen sword impress as make me bleed. Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; I bear a charmèd life, which must not yield to one of woman born.”

A few more lines, and he had you utterly in stitches; you did not bother to quiet your laughter. Of course, the lines now sounded completely meaningless, but Joe’s sense of humour was as ridiculous as your own, and in deriving pleasure from the ludicrousness of a Shakespeare work read backwards, Joe was more likable to you than ever.

“I believe you, I believe you!” you cried, and his composure crumpled, a grin spreading across his face.

“Thank god,” he said eventually, when the two of you could contain yourselves. “I thought I’d have to recite all of it before you gave in.”

You shook your head, still smiling.

“I would’ve done it, though,” he said, and you felt your chest tighten at the look of earnesty in his eyes.

“You should be an actor,” you told him, and he chuckled, the warmth of the sound warming you.

“I’m glad you think so. I am an actor.”

“Oh!”

“But I’m not pretending I want to be here with you,” he said.

Something like butterflies had fluttered beneath your skin.

He’d returned to Paracosm every day after that, and though he seemed happily surprised each time he encountered you, you weren’t so foolish as to believe that your meetings were actually a coincidence.

As the days went by, you grew more comfortable in Joe’s presence, until you were relaxed enough to begin an argument with him about which of the Brontë sisters was more forward-thinking in terms of women’s rights. Unlike most of the men you’d come across in your lifetime, Joe was perfectly comfortable debating such topics, even going so far as to slag off the more conservative male classical writers of the same time period. The two of you had then pored over the difference between Oscar Wilde’s poetry and his literature, examined the metaphors of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, trawled through the conspiracy theory regarding Shakespeare and whether or not he had really authored all of his own works. The latter conversation had become so heated that other cafe patrons had begun taking their own personal sides on the matter, loudly voicing their opinions until even Paracosm’s baristas had a thing or two to add to the discussion.

“How are you so well-read, anyway?” you’d asked Joe.

“My mom forced me through all of the classics before I was ten,” he’d said with a shrug. In his nonchalance, he became all the more alluring, the humbleness a complement to his personality.

Not many days into the routine of running into you at Paracosm, Joe had asked you to go out with him, properly.

You’d nodded, “Okay.”

“Okay?” he’d laughed, nervously. “You don’t have to go out with me if you don’t want to.”

“No,” you’d shaken your head, adamant that you get your point across. “I want to go out with you, Joe.”

His face had broken into a smile. “Okay,” he’d said, making you laugh, and his smile had broadened until it reached his lovely eyes.

The first time he’d kissed you had been on that first date.

He’d taken you to see a musical, one you’d struggled to pay attention to because Joe kept looking over at you to gauge your reaction to certain parts of the show, laughing with you, smiling when you smiled.

After the show, the two of you had wandered down the boulevard, and as it had been cold, you’d used this as your excuse to hover close enough by Joe’s side that your sleeves occasionally brushed as you walked with your arms by your sides.

You’d been content to walk like that, floundering for breath when his eyes caught on yours, your heart stumbling along its usually steady course. But then, in place of sleeves, his fingers had brushed your fingers, and suddenly you wanted more, to be closer to him in this blistering cold where his touch would surely warm you.

And he slipped his hand into yours.

You could hardly breathe.

“Look,” he said quietly, pointing up at the sky.

Confused, you frowned, but it wasn’t long before you realised his meaning: snow drifted down from above, snowflakes spinning through the air like dancers. It was beautiful, light snow, not the heavy kind, the kind there’d been on the day when Joe had first stumbled into Paracosm, the kind that would warrant a panic about losing one’s way home.

The snow was beautiful, but you couldn’t take your eyes off of Joe.

He stared up at the heavens, his eyes wide with childlike wonder, and for a moment, you lost yourself in watching him, drenched in your own memories of a simpler time.

Snow glittered in his hair, on the shoulders of his coat, on his eyelashes and on his collar. The word ‘angelic’ came to mind.

“I like snow,” he murmured.

You laughed softly. “I can see that.”

He lowered his eyes until they met yours.

You remembered that he was holding your hand.

“And I like you,” he said, a smile finding its way to his lips. His eyes were homely and familiar in his face, the face you’d looked into for so many days now, gazing at him and wondering at how it was really nothing more than a coincidence that the two of you had met. What a wonderful coincidence.

“I like you too, Joe,” you whispered, your hold tightening on his hand.

He lifted his other hand to your cheek, not quite touching you, but close enough to make your breath hitch.

His own gentle exhale tickled your skin.

Tentatively, he asked, “Is it okay if I kiss you?”

“More than okay,” you murmured, already gravitating toward him.

“Okay, because I wasn’t sure, and I wanted to be sure, and I—”

You cut him off, pressing your lips to his as he hummed a soft oh against your mouth and finally, finally pulled you into his arms.

You felt him wrap his coat around you, and you leaned further into him, relishing his warmth in the coldness of the night.

When he pulled back, he combed snow from your hair with the lightest of touches, laughter in his eyes.

“You know,” he said, “you must be more well-read than I am.”

You blinked at him. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, because that was classic, cutting me off.”

You rolled your eyes at the ridiculousness of his joke.

The snow fell more thickly now, but neither of you moved. You simply stood, you with your head nestled against Joe’s chest, Joe with his coat and his arms wrapped around you. His breath ruffled your hair.

“My well-read girl,” he whispered.

⭒

[littlesilverplatinum]

Gondola

@sumofn​

---

-At night, Ecruteak felt different.-

-Earlier in the day, the entirety of the Otsu household (or, rather, those who were in the country) had spent time in the old, yet new, city. Her grandparents had explained at breakfast that every year, just as summer began, the newly graduated kimono girls within the madams dance studio set up a festival to celebrate their growth. It was an event that they had partaken in every year since Koh - Hikari’s father - was but a boy. And now, they were excited to share this experience with her, too.

She had been clad in an old kimono that her grandmother had worn in her youth, her hair brushed and styled in a low bun that had made the roundness of her face stand out to an embarrassing degree. However… She had been complimented, spoken to as though she were a doll - and so, as they had left home, Hikari simply forgot to feel any shame in regards her appearance as a whole. 

She would have much more things to occupy her mind with as the day went on either way.-

-What Hikari had expected from the festival had, admittedly, been very little. The way it had been described to her had made it seem as though it would but a small event, mostly surrounding the property of the dance theater and the girls within it - however, that assumption had been wrong. The streets had been utterly transformed from their usual, plain selves, with lines of lanterns stretching overhead between the buildings, behaving like fairy lights in the sky as evenings slowly fell. Stalls were set up at every street corner, vending trinkets and charms, foods and sweets - the air, infused by the sweet aroma in a manner that, honestly, had made her feel quite dizzy. And, at the very center of an otherwise bare plaza... There had been an attraction propped up. One of which had stood barely taller than the buildings that surrounded it, yet tall enough to where Hikari had stood in awe at her grandmother's side.

Her hand, gently squeezing hers as though she was an excitable child.-

-A Ferris Wheel, it was – and Hikari had not been able to ride it once.-

-Hikari hopped off her bike as she neared the city’s outskirts, opting to instead lead it over the cobbled streets to save herself further pain upon her rump. Embarrassing though it may be, her trip from the farm to Ecruteak hadn’t been as easy as one may have hoped…-

---

“I’m… so stupid.”

-The only thing that had been heard through the night had been quiet, cricket humming - as well as the huffs and groans of the little girl known as ’Hiccup’. To her cheeks, her hair had clung - flustered due to the humid night air and it was to the point where, quietly, she regretted having thrown on a cardigan over her creamy nightgown. Her stomach, hurting from the way the tiles of their roof had dug into her guts….

What Hikari had expected when she decided – stupidly – to leave her family’s farmhouse unannounced, was that it would be a task as easy as it had been all the way back home. It was something she had done a thousand times over, and something that she undoubtedly would do a thousand times more once summer inevitably was properly through, but…This? She had not expected to get stuck, dangling off the edge of their covered porch roof, with her sandals already having succumbed to the fate of falling to the floor. The only thing that would dampen her fall, being that of hard packed soil.

She always has to get herself in trouble somehow… Didn’t she?

Now, one may then have wonder how – or rather, why – it was that little Hikari had found herself in this unfortunate predicament in the very first place. A question that she undoubtedly would have to answer to come morning, when there was bound to be a distinct, bald patch of tiling that no longer held moss over the front porch entryway – and why, therefore, it was that she had decided to leave home via the roof (for she knew she wouldn’t be able to lie to them), rather than simply exiting through the front door. And Hikari herself had started to wonder the same exact thing, too.-

-She already had been downstairs to get a spare house key, after all… And it laid heavily within her cardigan pocket as a mocking reminder.- 

-Quietly, her cheeks had huffed up from frustration as she wiggled her behind. Hikari dug her elbows into the tiles and, in a futile attempt, tried to raise one of her legs back on to the roof. She swayed herself, dangled and tried everything that she could think of to get back onto the roof but…Though her weight was minuscule compared to many her age, she simply hadn’t been able to hoist herself back up. Be it that her legs had had nowhere to find leverage, or the fact that the roof was slanted in such a way that didn’t allow for her to properly pull herself upwards. No matter her effort… Hikari simply had been stuck.

… That was, until she wasn’t.

By a slip of her hips (bruised, due to how rough the tiles edges were), she had slid further down the roof until it was her gut of which bent awkwardly at the figurative cliff's edge. Something that caused her heart to leap high into her throat, and her fingers to cling desperately to the moss that covered the old, sun-bleached roof.-

“No, no, no, no, no no no no-“-she repeated to herself, her eyes as wide as saucers as she had tried to stop herself from tumbling to the ground – yet, despite her best efforts… tumble, she had. Hikari slid off the roof, falling flat upon her rump upon the modest porch steps hard enough to cause ants feet to travel over her thighs and spine. Sucking through her teeth, she had tried her very best not to cry from the pain that traversed over her tailbone, her hands cupping the area as though it would do a thing to alleviate the pain.

Hikari remembered that, for but a moment, she had wondered to herself if this would’ve been a time where something like swearing would’ve been the most appropriate thing one could do. Instead, however – through a stifled cry and sucked in breath – she had simply said:- “… Oh, poop.”

-Turning herself the right side up, she snagged herself her shoes back before staggering up upon wobbly feet. Mechanically she had wandered down the trek to the farms modest shed - long blades of grass lapping at her bare shins.

Her hand had hurt as she hoisted the heavy beam lock off of the sheds door, as had her shoulder as she tentatively pushed it ajar. But the light from the sole, half window illuminated the inside for her. Something that was just barely enough to guide her through the many trinkets that her grandfather kept inside, until she found exactly what it was she had been looking for.

A pair of bikes leant up against one another, at the very far back wall. Old and rusty little things of which Hiroji - her grandfather - at an earlier date had admitted didn’t get much use anymore. The old couple had been avid cyclists back in the day, favoring it over taking the truck into town should their shopping be light enough.

Nowadays, however, it was an effort that brought more pain than it did joy.

The leathery handle of the smaller, pale green bike had felt cold to the touch within her palm... or, perhaps she simply had been so much warmer in comparison. Taking a hold of the steer properly, Hikari had lifted the bicycle with all of her might and soon enough, it was led outside.

The wheels creaked with rust, as did the pedals as she carefully straddled the seat. Her toes barely reached the ground when she sat, and she almost toppled over as the very first thing that she did. However… It was enough. She could stand for most of the ride anyways.-

-And off, she had gone.-

--- -Though it was the middle of the night, Ecruteak still stood out as a beacon against the surrounding forests. As lively as it once had been, it now certainly wasn’t – but the patrons of bar’s and yards joined in on disturbing the peace alongside her own rattling cycle.

Once or twice, she met with company. A young couple of which walked hand in hand across the street had whispering sweet nothings to one another loud enough so that anyone near would hear. Hikari’s cheeks had flustered and ducked her head as she passed them by, the unseemly words - though spoken in an unfamiliar dialect - foul enough to have her hurry past. She didn’t need to know what it was the man wanted to do with the woman’s private parts, thank you very much… No. All that Hikari truly wanted, as she passed empty stalls and fairy lights - as she turned into alleyways and smaller streets, was to find the plaza once more.-

-Though awed, she had been… The reason Hikari hadn’t ridden it, even when the opportunity had presented itself, was because she had felt quite childish for wanting to do so. It would’ve been a task she would’ve had to do on her own – for both grandma and grandpa cited that they did not do well with heights, no matter how miniscule they may be. And so, she had said she didn’t need to if it would be an inconvenience. She wasn’t a child, after all.

It was, however, a choice that had quietly eaten at her, as she and her family had made their modest trek back home.

Shaking her head, as though it would have her forget it all had occurred, Hikari pushed forth, careless in her handling of her bike as she passed by familiar signs and posters plastered upon dry, concrete walls until eventually - finally - she found her nightly goal.-

-The Ferris wheel.-

-Stood just where she had left it, exactly as she had left it. Just, perhaps, a little less… Lively and bright. 

As the event had come to an end, the operators of the attraction naturally had packed up for the day and left - turning off all the lights of which dawned the steel beams and brightly colored gondolas. However, this fact did not discourage the young girl from stomping her feet with excitement as she crossed the open space to set her cycle by a looming post, nor did it stop her from struggling with pushing down the bike's crutch.

Come on, come on, come on… There!

It was left on its own, unsecured, but safe - and Hikari tugged at her cardigan as she, with hurried steps, crossed the space between it and the wheel. All that she really wanted to do, despite not being able to actually ride the Ferris wheel for real, was to at the very least experience sitting within one of its pods.

If only for a little while.

It would seem, however, that she wasn’t the only one.-

-Her steps slowly faltered and, eventually, she came to a full stop. Just short of a boy who stood taller than herself, and most certainly taller than most of Johto’s population. A boy that Hikari - oddly enough - hadn’t thought could be there. As though she was the only one in the world who could think of visiting a shutdown attraction in the dead of night.-

“… Oh.”

[wistfulkitten]

i dream you'd love me again (2) || jk

sadness, guilt, regret. all things jeongguk felt after reading her letter.

genre: angst and fluff? childhood friends, cheating, sisters boyfriend au

pairing: jeongguk x reader

word count: 2.3k

posted: 200518

warnings: longing, infidelity, profanity (kinda), mentions of sex, probably inconsistent punctuation 

a/n: theres probably gonna be minor grammar issues because grammarly is shit and im tired. n e way i tried making this longer, it took me like four hours believe it or not. funni how i can make time for writing but not for my hw. silly me. i tried explained why he did what he did and im sorry if it was crappy. thank u to yall who read the first one. if you guys have any requests or ideas feel free to send me something in my inbox or message me. tyty:))

------------------------------------------------------------

sadness. sadness is what jeongguk felt at the end of ___’s letter. sad that he hurt her enough to the point that she thought of herself as anything but perfect. sad that she doubted his feelings for her. sad that despite everything he put her through, she still loved him and still wished him the best. he always knew she had a big heart. it's one of the many reasons he was drawn to her in the beginning, but it was also one of her biggest weaknesses. her heart was too big for her own good and it scared him. ___ was always too quick to forgive and forget and most of the time it came back to bite her in the ass.

 he saw it time after time when her dad had left. he had had an affair and left his wife and two kids for a younger woman and yet she never got mad or ever blamed her father in contrary to yoona. while yoona never gave her father the time of day after the separation, ___ always made sure to set time aside for him even when he never put in enough effort to interacting with his daughters. he was a pretty crappy father, content with his new life. and though it made her sad that her family was no longer whole and her mother was practically always crying herself to sleep, it made her happy that her dad was happy. she was just about twelve then and still, she never gave into childish grudges. thirteen year old jeongguk found her slightly stupid for this trait but as they grew up, he found it quite endearing. 

guilt. after the sadness had settled in, a great wave of guilt washed over his being. while he was here, newly married with a whole life ahead of him, you were somewhere out there living the life you always wanted sad and lonely. too heartbroken to even enjoy it properly. he didn't deserve it, the comfort and security his new marriage gave him, he didn't deserve it. 

 jeongguk was merely seventeen when he fell in love with a sixteen year old ___ all the while he dated yoona, her older sister. he’d known them practically his whole life and it was such a small town that it was simply impossible for you not to know anyone and everyone. everyone went to the same schools and hardly anyone moved out of the godforsaken town. he and yoona started dating in the sixth grade. much too young to be dating but their families were long time friends and saw it appropriate for the two to start early. so that one day the two families would unite. jeongguk hadn’t minded at first. he was eleven at the time but yoona had always been a good friend. they played together all the time so nothing really changed except for the frequent hugs and occasional kiss on the cheek.

 as they grew older they graduated into more mature ways of affection but it never bothered him too much. though he was friends with yoona, he was always closer to ___. sure at first, he had trouble expressing but afterward never once did they ever feel reserved towards one another, only ever honest with every bit of their being.  while yoona was more reserved and occasionally bratty, ___ was outspoken and adventurous. always willing to try something new even if it wasn't exactly encouraged. she never shied away from speaking her mind and that was something jeongguk always aspired to be. she was everything he wasn’t.  she expressed herself in every possible way. hair color was constantly changing since the start of high school. she pulled off any type of style you could think of. you could pick her out of any crowd in an instant. she painted, wrote poems and songs, sang, played various instruments, even took up photography. she turned any type of art form into a way for people to understand her, every single part of her. she was good at so many things and jeongukk, jeongukk was good at one thing. basketball. yet she never made him feel bad about it, instead she went to every game. cheering him on. she was mesmerizing in every single way. 

 while they had their good moments, yoona had a knack of patronizing him for every fault and imperfection. when they started high school she had tried so hard to be looked at as the perfect couple. she made it a point to show that they ‘never fought’ and were always ‘happy’. he never spent too much time with his friends because ‘every boyfriend had to put his girlfriend first’. this is the exact reason jimin never liked her and why jin always referred to her as a pain in the ass. it was safe to say his friends weren't exactly fond of her either. she was so different from ___ which was good or bad, depending on who you were asking. 

yoona was pretty, though jeongguk would say ___ was prettier. soft features, soft personality, light colors were a constant, skirt never too short, hair never too long. she was a straight line kind of girl like the majority of girls in town. grades never faltering. she always believed in the whole study hard, get a good job, have kids plan everyone stuck to and it was always so suffocating. 

he wanted more out of life, he wanted to explore places, explore himself. he wanted to get to know himself in more ways than one because he had yet to know all of it. all of him. but by the time he was sixteen, jeongguk already had a career to work towards and a girl everyone was so sure would be his wife. it was like his life was a book and everyone but him was the author. he had no control and he started to dread the future. he was running and he knew what would be at the finish line, so he slowed down. while yoona was running full speed, he was jogging at most. he started faking a persona in front of his family and yoona because they simply didn’t get it and they never would. 

when he couldn’t exactly talk to his own girlfriend about his feelings and problems ___ was always there to listen. she was good at that. listening. she never judged, instead always reassuring him that when the time came he’ll know what to do. she had an easygoing way of living and he longed to live like that too. though her mother didn't agree and favored yoona more, she simply took it as it was and cherished what she had for the time being. her love for her mother and sister never faltered even if their love never measured up. ___ had a way of looking at the world that could get her far, far away from here and jeongguk envied that. she said all his feelings were valid and no one should be mad at him for simply feeling. once he had slowed down enough for the once blurry images to become clear, he’d realized that running with yoona was far too tiring and that walking with ___ was far more fulfilling.

 jeongguk was merely seventeen when he fell in love with a sixteen year old ___ and it was the most exhilarating feeling ever. it had started out as just a friend being there for a friend, but one day it turned into something more. they had been out on one for their many infamous nightly drives when they had stopped at a cliff, a pretty view of their small town in sight. pretty lights below and above. the stars were out that night just like them, watching the rest of the world sleep. she’d looked into his eyes, simultaneously looking into his soul. with anyone else, he would’ve felt naked and exposed but with her, he wanted her to see everything and to understand everything. he realized he only ever wanted one person to do that and he wanted to express it in the best way possible. he kissed her. really kissed her and she didn't shy away. he knew it was wrong, they both did, but it felt so good. so good that it felt right. right there, in the back of jeongguk’s first car, clothes disappeared one by one and they wrote love poems into the bareness of their skin. so passionate, so raw that it was impossible to stop afterward. they did it again and again behind closed doors, behind the curtain they drew in the depths of night. it was nothing they ever felt before. when they weren’t tangled within each other they explored as much as the city would let them. talking about anything and everything. no boundaries. 

___ planned on leaving once she graduated, didn’t know where to but the farther the better. she hated it here and so did he. it made jeongguk sick to even think about a life without her in it. he was selfish, he knows. he had them both and it was very clear which of them he loved more yet it saddened him that the one he favored more would ever leave him here. alone. that was until she asked him to come with. she asked him to run away with her. he swears if he wasn't deeply in love with her then, he was now. of course he said yes. running away and seeing the world with his favorite girl was a dream. a dream he truly wanted to become reality. 

they planned it out. jeongguk and yoona graduated and while ___ finished her final year in high school and yoona stared college, jeongguk took a gap year waiting for ___. waiting for their dream while working jobs here and there, financially preparing. he also took a business internship so that his family would get off his back for working instead of college. it was full proof, even the boys knew. though they thought it was risky, they supported them both. they had grown fond of ___.  they’d both work jobs to add onto their savings and the day after ___ graduated they’d leave and never come back. that was the plan, the dream. and yet they never made it.  

regret. he regretted it so much. the faithful day came but jeongguk didn’t. she waited and waited but he couldn’t do it. he watched from afar, luggage in hand. watch her wait. watched her cry when she realized. he cried with her. he was just so damn scared. a coward is what he was. he was scared of the unknown, something he craved so much and yet he was scared of it. and that's exactly how he felt for ___ at that moment. he craved her so much, loved her so much, and yet he was scared of her. scared that her spontaneous ways would one day be the end of them. he thought of yoona, at least with yoona he knew what he was getting. knew exactly where they’d end up. he wanted certainty and that's why he watched her leave. but to his surprise, she didn't leave, not yet. she stayed and waited, waited long enough for everyone else to find out. she was then branded as a little slut that wanted a taste of the forbidden fruit, the one he didn't choose. it was far from the truth but its what everyone believed. and so she left far far away and he didn't chase after her. god did he regret it. every day since that day he’s felt nothing but regret. he was back to putting the mask on trying to appease everyone. surprisingly no one reprimanded him and for that he felt anger, anger he’d only felt towards himself.

___ was the love of his life so it hurt. it hurt to see that she didn’t think of herself like he did. he wasn't aware she felt that way. like she was in yoona’s shadow. to him, it had never been like that because she’d been the one he sought to look at first in every room. it hurt to see she thought so low of herself but you could say he wasn't any better. he was newly married and yet he was miserable. it had only been a few months since he and yoona got married and people were already asking when they were having a baby. straight out of college and things were moving so fast. he was nauseated and lived life in such a lethargic manner. he needed her. 

she said she still loved him. maybe it wasn’t too late. maybe he could turn things around and fulfill the dream they never reached. so he picks up the phone and dialed the number he used to call every night. it was so familiar that he didn’t need to think twice about it.

it rang once, twice, and finally, on the third ring, she answered.

“gukk?”

he cried at the sound of her voice. he missed her so much. after a while, he could hear soft sniffling from the other line.

“can i come home?” he asked, voice so hoarse it hurt.

“you are home… aren’t you?” voice strained, sounding confused.

“no no, you’re my home ___. i need to come home. “

with that jeongguk couldn’t help but cry harder.

“shhh shhh gukk, it's ok. everything will be ok.” she cooed familiar words he hadn’t heard in a while. “ok, come home. come to me baby.”

he booked the first flight he could as soon as she said where she was and packed up as much as he could. he was gonna stop living this lie and start living for himself. something he should have done four years ago. and in a few hours, that’s exactly what he was gonna do. live the life he dreamed of with her, no holding back. he needed to stop being afraid. he was on his way, without a care in the world. jeongguk loved ___ and ___ loved him. that's all that mattered.

he’d send the divorce papers over tomorrow.

[eye-of-enigmatic-thought]

When you arrived at the Habitat, you weren’t sure what to expect. Sure, you expected those cheesy patronizing motivational posters and videos, some strict rules, and that it wouldn’t do much in actually helping you get better (though it was better than nothing), but everything else? Those carnival attendants? How much different the air becomes at night? The man behind the Habitat himself? To say it was a surprise would be an understatement.

Your first meeting with Dr. Habit was... bizarre, sure, he seemed friendly enough and had a flamboyant goofy personality that you found charming, but it was definitely not something you were expecting from a professional doctor running a self-help program. You tried not to judge, everyone had their quirks, after all.

“Oh? Du we hav a niew addishun? : - )”

You had waited a long while in that dimly lit office, so Habit finally arriving and breaking your fidgeting and daydreaming made you jump, the wait time probably should’ve been a good enough hint that this was probably not the most adequate place, but you were desperate to find some place to stay, so here you are... in a dark office with this... giant of a man who was your doctor, and the office you were in seemed to have malfunctioning lights, so it was so dim that you couldn’t really see all of him.

“Hehehe! Why so jumpi? Et is only me, silli!” His voice was very deep and he had a Russian accent, yet despite having the recipe for having the voice of a James Bond villain his voice was incredibly soft, almost soothing, though he had a cheery and childish tone, was this big Russian guy trying to babytalk you??

You decide to ignore his odd tone and proceed to explain to him your situation and the reason for your sadness, how life has been so difficult, how no doctors have been able to help your mental health issues, and how you need some break from it all, just a place to stay before you get back up on your feet and feel more ready to deal with... well, everything. Throughout your explanation Dr. Habit was quiet and listening intently, you appreciated that he was listening, unlike the other doctors you’ve tried to talk to about your problems, though his expression felt... a little too eager to listen to your woes, and you could swear the more you looked at him and the shadows surrounding him, the more they seemed to shift...

“Sad! Sooo sadd! Life is ver harrd yes? I know too well...” At his last sentence, Habit’s previously cheerful demeanor shifted into being more solemn, but he quickly shifted back.

“But! Thatt is whi u come 2 my Habitat yes? Do not worri my frend, u may stae as looong as you like until u find yor smile! And if u can’t find eet...”

Habit gave a long pause, as if setting some sort of punchline, and he seemed to be reaching for something under the desk with his right hand, though he didn’t break eye contact with you. Before you could ask what he was doing, suddenly he shoved a large puppet replica of himself in front of you.

“U can stay for te BIG EVENT! And get yor smile then! : - )” Said the ‘Pabit’, or Habit ventriloquizing as the puppet. You just looked at the puppet in bewilderment, taken aback by just how... surreal this was, here you were in a dark office with a eccentric gigantic doctor that you knew nothing about aside from the official ‘website’ of the Habitat, possibly risking getting into something shady all because no other doctor has been able to help you, and this guy has a puppet version of himself that he’s using to talk to you right now...

You had to laugh.

Habit showed a content expression at the sight of your laughter, clearly pleased with himself for making you laugh.

“Seeee? Yor’r finding your smiiiile! See howw much we can helpp? But if you still cain’t find it, dere’s always the Big Event! : - ) : - ) : - )” He continued speaking with the puppet, you had to hand it to him, he did make you laugh and was surprisingly good at ventriloquism, he didn’t even seem to be moving his lips at all, though it was hard to tell due to how dim the office was. Still, as surreal as the entire thing was, you couldn’t help but find it charming. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad? 

Habit then stood up, once again reminding you of just how large this man was. He walked around his desk and stood in front of you, slightly leaning down. You couldn’t help but be a little intimidated by his massive size, but he still held a cheery and friendly expression as he gently placed his left hand on the back of your shoulder, lightly pulling upwards to coerce you to stand up as well, now also being very close to him.

Wait wait wait whAT-

This... The doctor is now holding your back and you are VERY close to him, is... isn’t this a bit too... close? Or personal?? Is this even protocol??? Jesus christ he is ginormous and he’s holding you what the f-

“Why don’t wee take you 2 the Habittat? : - )” His puppet asked with his same cheerfulness.

Does this guy just have no concept of personal space?? You tried to rationalize to yourself that some people just don’t sometimes, as he didn’t seem to be aware of just how awkward this actually was, but this was a presumably professional doctor, and yet... there were so many aspects of his demeanor... tidbits of his personality and the way he spoke to you, this was probably not a stable man. There was something else about him too... now that you were very close to him, you could tell he had a strange scent that you couldn’t quite put your finger on what it was, but it was a familiar type of smell, it takes you back, to maybe when you were a kid, playing too roughly in the school playground and then clumsily tripping over onto the concrete floor, how much it hurt, how much you cried, and how much you were covered in cuts and scrapes and-

“Welcom 2 the HABITAT! : - )”

You were so distracted by your own thoughts and how awkward you felt you didn’t even realize you walked past the gates of the Habitat with him, his left hand still gently holding your shoulders and back, his right still operating that puppet of his.

You looked around the courtyard, it... didn’t look much, but it seemed actually kind of nice, it had a relatively calming atmosphere, maybe thanks to it’s simplicity. You noticed a bunch of different posters and murals around on the walls, they were... definitely designed and drawn by Habit, but they were more cheesy than anything. In front of you were some extra more smaller gates, beyond them you could hear some distant machinery. There also seemed to be a random puddle in the middle of the courtyard, maybe it was there for... decoration? 

Your observing was then interrupted by the sound of jangling keys to your right.

The puppet held and jingled some keys next to you, then leaning in closer to give you the keys and place them in your hand.

“These ar the keys to your apartiment, u’ll find it by walking up the staires.” Habit directed you, pointing with the puppet at a door to your right, still holding you with his left hand. “It is evening, so you betterr get some sleep naow, we hav a strict beddy-time, so don’t skip curfew, or else!”

You were then gently pushed forward to the door to the stairwell, the weight of Habit’s hand lifting from your shoulders, you were about to walk up the stairs on your own, when a question appeared in your mind about Habit’s strange wording.

“Wait... what do you mean ‘Or else?’“ you asked Habit.

But there was no answer.

You looked back, but the doctor was nowhere to be found

You blinked slowly, confused and bewildered. It was quick and there wasn’t even any sound to indicate that Habit was gonna leave or already left, he just... silently disappeared, how did he even...?

This... was incredibly strange, this self help doctor was not only just a very eccentric man, but there were so many qualities of him that should be red flags, that you should leave this place asap, but you remind yourself about how almost nowhere else has been able to help and that at least this place offers free housing, but you can’t help but think... how childish his tone was, how he owned a puppet of himself, how he had no concept of personal space, how oddly the shadows around him seemed to shift, how strange his scent was...

!!!

It was only when you were alone you realized what the doctor smelled like. 

He smelled of copper. 

And the place where he placed his hand on you felt oddly wet.

[spaceskam]

prompt #5: hallmark-esque returning to hometown after years [ao3]

Jenna Cameron had no intention of seeing Liz Ortecho again.

They’d met in a college town in 2010‒Jenna was on leave and Liz was stressed over finals and they were both looking for a distraction. They’d talked for too many hours in a bar that didn’t say anything about their underaged patrons and had stumbled out a little drunk and a little handsy. They hooked up in Liz’s dorm and Jenna stayed the night. They ate breakfast together, talked, laughed, spoke vaguely about staying in touch, hooked up one more time before Jenna had to get ready. She had a plane to catch.

They didn’t stay in touch. There were too many reasons that they couldn’t, too many life things. Jenna was focused on taking care of her sister and hating the men she was surrounded by. When she finally got out of the military, she bounced around for a while to find somewhere that felt right and she ended up landing in a small town called Roswell, New Mexico.

Her coworkers were nice and the townspeople weren’t bad if you ignored most of them. It was fine, for now. She could have fun hooking up with the broad shouldered deputy and she had the time to teach herself how to knit half a sock that was too big for any living human and she finished a book for the first time in nearly a decade. It was fine for now. It was like she was waiting for the reason she felt this was a good stopping point, waiting for something to happen that would make it make sense.

And then she saw Liz Ortecho.

“License and registration?”

“Oh, this is bullshit. It’s the middle of the night and there is no reason for this unless you’re searching for a goddamn murderer that might be running, so, tell me, are you? Do you think I have a murderer in my car, hidden under a blanket in the backseat? Are you going to search? Or do you just see someone who isn’t white as a sheet and think‒”

“Liz?” Jenna asked. Liz froze as she blinked with the light in her eyes, so Jenna turned the flashlight to face the ground.

She didn’t actually expect Liz to remember her. Hell, she hadn’t expected to remember Liz. There was no reason for her to remember a one night stand, regardless of how charming she was. Jenna thought of her more often than she should when she knew she would never see her again. But here she was, somehow in the same small town eight years after they’d met.

“Jenna?” Liz asked, her eyes widening as recognition set in. Something twisted in her gut at the fact that Liz remembered her. Liz was memorable, sure, but Jenna? She’d never felt memorable a day in her life.

And yet…

“What are you doing here?” Jenna asked at the same time Liz said, “Why the hell are you a cop?”

“I’m, I’m visiting my dad. I grew up here,” Liz said. Jenna almost laughed. Of all the places to feel like a temporary stopping place, of course it would be the hometown of a girl she hadn’t been able to forget even after all these years. “Your turn, since when the hell were you planning to become a cop? I thought you hated the whole military environment, why would you go to the next closest thing?”

And all Jenna could think was she remembered something I didn’t like.

“Life, I guess,” Jenna offered in lieu of childish awe, “It was easy. Something I can do for now.”

“For now,” Liz repeated. It wasn’t a question. Just… for now. Not forever. “So, uh, are-are you gonna search my car or whatever?”

“No, no, you go. Go see your dad,” Jenna said. She couldn’t actually remember if she checked her license and registration. It didn’t matter.

“Yeah, okay, uh, was nice seeing you again,” Liz said, giving a small smile and a nod.

“You too.”

Liz looked forward and put her car back in drive, but she barely moved a centimeter before she slammed on her breaks again and looked over to Jenna with that familiar look in her eye. God, it was familiar. How could something she hadn’t seen in eight years feel so familiar?

“My dad owns the Crashdown,” she stated. Jenna’s eyebrows raised a little.

“That’s where I get breakfast,” she admitted. Liz smiled.

“Then maybe I’ll see you around.”

“You will.”

Liz drove off for real that time and it left Jenna frozen in her place. And it seems, just like it was for the last eight years, her thoughts were consumed with Liz Ortecho. Just, now, it was something within reach.

Because Liz Ortecho had come home and Jenna was, for some reason, already waiting.

-

Jenna Cameron had never been known for her restraint.

Quite the opposite, actually. She was impulsive and, while she never quite considered herself to have vices, she also never deprived herself. She was never irresponsible or stupid, but she understood humans had only so much time before they died and it was over. Why not chase after things that were good and do risky things that were always worth it?

It was how she ended up at nearly midnight, walking past the Crashdown.

There was no reason for Liz to still be awake and there was no reason for Jenna to be strolling past, but Liz was and Jenna was. She looked through the window and Liz was just dancing, enjoying herself, because what else did pretty girls do if not dance like no one was watching? Wasn’t that a saying for a reason?

It was stupid and entirely built on some memory of kissing soft thighs while Liz giggled through her explanation of chemical compounds, but Jenna found herself knocking on the door with the confidence of a man who had never been told ‘no’ in his life. Liz jumped and turned her head, clearly startled. Jenna just gave her kindest smile. She had no idea what she was going to say to her. ‘How have you been’ sounded too hollow, while ‘I’ve been thinking about you every day for eight years’ felt too full.

“Hi,” Liz said, a soft smile replacing her shock as she unlocked the door, “Funny meeting you here.”

“I felt like we got off on the wrong foot,” Jenna said, “Wasn’t exactly the best way to see you again after all this time.”

“Yeah, officer,” Liz laughed, “Maybe you shouldn’t have checkpoints.”

“They’re routine.”

“They’re pointless,” Liz corrected, still giving her that smile that told Jenna everything she thought about it. Jenna just nodded. She couldn’t disagree.

“But I wouldn’t have known you were back in town, so maybe they aren’t completely pointless,” Jenna said. Liz gave a playful glare up at her.

“We get it, Jenna, you’re charming. This isn’t news,” she said. Jenna laughed, looking around. It looked different at night. Picturesque, almost. Perfect place to be standing across from a girl she’d missed for no reason. “So, can I get you anything?”

“Aren’t you already closed?”

“I can make an exception for you,” Liz offered. Jenna smiled easily, biting the inside of her cheek slightly as she looked at her. She’d somehow, miraculously, gotten more gorgeous since the first time they’d met. She didn’t know that was possible. “I’ll make you a shake, give me a few minutes.”

Liz hopped around to the other side of the counter, stealing glances over at Jenna as if she thought she was going to disappear. She had no intention to as she sat down on a barstool and leaned forward against the counter.

“What have you been up to?” Jenna asked, eager to keep the conversation going. Liz looked up at her a little wistfully.

“I was working on a study, boring biomedical research. It was for regenerative medicine so I could eventually start targeting more chronic illnesses and making them at the very least bearable, but our funding got pulled and I guess it just seemed like a good time to come home,” Liz said, shrugging.

“It’s not boring,” Jenna insisted. Liz smiled just a little. “I may not understand it, but it’s not boring. Besides, my sister does something like that. But I’m sorry your funding got pulled.”

“It’s fine,��� Liz said, shrugging her shoulder, “Life happens. Just gotta roll with the punches.”

“Doesn’t make it suck less.”

“That’s true,” Liz laughed, bobbing her head to a song that was playing faintly from the jukebox, “I didn’t know your sister was into science.”

“She’s a genetic engineer,” Jenna filled in. She left out the part where she got in trouble for whistleblowing. That seemed a little too heavy for a second meeting. Still, Liz’s face lit up.

“Seriously? Does she live around here?”

“No, she’s still in the military,” Jenna said. It wasn’t a complete lie.

“Well, if she’s ever in town, let me know. I love hearing new perspectives,” she said. Jenna nodded. She didn’t actually know how she’d handle her sister and Liz talking about smart things she didn’t quite understand past a very, very basic level. It might cause too much fondness for her to handle.

“Sounds like you intend to actually stay in touch this time,” Jenna teased. Liz whipped around and pointed a spoon at her, a playful glare on her face.

“You didn’t keep in touch either.”

“I was in the military.”

“All the more reason for you to tell me where to send letters too. I could’ve written really long, obnoxious love letters and sent, like, boudoir pictures to make everyone you worked with jealous,” Liz said. Jenna laughed and leaned into the counter more.

“You could do that now, though I don’t know how that’d fair in a police station.”

“Fuck police stations,” Liz said simply. Jenna rolled her eyes and huffed a laugh. When Liz turned to her again, she gave her a very exaggerated smile as she batted her eyelashes. “Sorry, Officer, forgive me?”

“You’re forgiven,” Jenna said easily. Liz dissolved into laughter as she finished up the shake and placed it on the counter. “You’re something else.”

“Something good, I hope,” she said. Jenna nodded as she watched Liz push a straw into the drink and push it Jenna’s way.

“Very good.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Liz teased. Jenna took a sip of the shake and nodded her approval. Liz’s smile widened. “I still got it.”

She hopped up a little more and leaned over, her lips closing over the straw that Jenna’s had just been on. Then she looked up through her eyelashes and… She knew exactly what she was doing. Jenna shook her head just a little.

“Yeah,” Liz said, falling back to her feet, “I still got it.”

They stared for a long time. It felt like they were 20 again, back in that shitty college bar and drinking when they shouldn’t. Jenna’s heart picked up speed as if preparing to be tugged upstairs to prove that she’d gotten better in the eight years between them.

“I still can’t believe you’re a cop,” Liz said softly, “Didn’t you want to do something better? I feel like you said you wanted to do something better.”

Jenna shrugged. “I’m 28 and I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.”

“That’s fair,” Liz said, “Not many people do.”

“You do.”

“I got lucky.”

They fell into silence again, just staring. The jukebox shifted songs again and a song she couldn’t quite remember the name of started playing. It was nostalgic in a way where the exact memory didn’t come to her, but it just made her feel young.

“I haven’t heard this song in forever,” Jenna said. Liz smiled, but it wasn’t that big, bright one she’d been giving all night. This one was just a bit more bittersweet.

“It was one of my sister’s favorites,” Liz said, tapping the counter, “I pretty much liked anything she liked, so I sort of have this one memorized.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“She, uh,” Liz said, eyes drifting around a bit before meeting Jenna’s again, “She died when she was 19. Driving while drunk. Or high, or whatever.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jenna said, empathy pulsing through her. She was already struggling as it was and her sister wasn’t even gone forever. She was just in jail for something fucking stupid. She couldn’t imagine losing her like that.

But Liz just shook her head and smiled. “It’s alright. I’ve had a decade to mourn.”

“Yeah, but grief doesn’t go away,” Jenna said. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to say in the moment and it sure as hell wasn’t going to get her laid, but it was honest. She’d lost people and grief never really faded. It just got a little bit easier to manage, a little bit easier to work it into your day to day life.

Liz seemed to know that very well.

She licked her lips, fingertips grazing the counter as she walked back around to the other side. Jenna smiled softly as she hopped into the barstool beside her. Liz nudged her shoulder into hers.

“I used to wonder what would happen if I ever saw you again,” Liz admitted, “I didn’t expect it to be here.”

“Me too,” Jenna agreed, “To both.”

Liz tapped against the counter and then leaned closer against. Jenna took a sip of the shake before turning the straw to Liz. She took a sip and looked up to Jenna, staring for a minute. Jenna was pretty sure she could enjoy Liz staring at her for the rest of her life.

The first time they met, they had been exactly what the other needed. Something light, something new, something fun. Tonight, Jenna was beginning to wonder if they’d met again at the right time to be what the other needed‒a new start when they felt a little lost.

Liz leaned a bit closer and Jenna tilted her head down to match.

“If I kiss you now, am I moving too fast?” Liz asked.

“Technically you’ve been stringing me along for eight years,” Jenna responded. Liz smiled wide and then moved up for a kiss.

And they kissed.

And they kissed.

And then there were gunshots. 

[magioftheseas]

Held

For @spacechild-glitchypix-tip and also @badthingshappenbingo

Prompt: Cry Into Chest taken from here.

Rating: T

Warnings: Violence and language.

Notes: Vent-y... But I tried!!! I’m sorry it took so long! It’s a bit experimental, too, and I hope that turned out okay.

***Alternate Ao3 Link***

Commission? Donate?

It goes like this. Once there was a boy who lost his mother completely, after months and years of steady deterioration. One might think her inevitable death had been a relief. A merciful end to that strain of rotting misery, twisting and warping and killing his mother psychologically until she was unrecognizable. He still ended up crying into the shoulder of the worst person on the planet.

And as she stroked his hair and wiped away his tears, cooing sweet words of comfort in that gross, despicable voice of her—he had wanted to promise that, no matter what, he’ll protect her.

Hilarious, right? A fucking riot, right?

Well, not as much of a riot as the ones she started, but... Fuck. He really had been that fucking stupid and desperate from the start. In his defense, he never cried in front of another person ever again. He was pretty content to never feeling anything again after she tried to kill him.

He was extra, extra content to not feel after she died.

And yet, and yet, and yet, and yet.

Back up. There was something important that had been forgotten. Well, there had been many things forgotten. Lost in that bitch’s shadow, or blotted out by her overbearing and blinding radiance. Either way, one of those things was a certain person. Particular out of a sea of particulars—even to the point of drawing the headmaster’s attention.

Yeah, Komaeda Nagito. The Ultimate Lucky. Literally the only case one could make for luck even existing in the first place, much less applicable as a talent. Not that Komaeda had control over his cosmic luck. God forbid that. He still doesn’t want to think about what Kamukura Izuru was capable of with his luck.

He digresses. This isn’t about Kamukura Izuru, right now. It’s about Komaeda. Komaeda Nagito. Ultimate Luck. Ultimate Hope Fanboy. Lanky, angular, pale, and riddled with disease, including frontotemporal dementia, which landed him squarely in Matsuda’s lap.

He’s not the kind of person who sees his mother in every single dementia patient. He’s not that creepy and pathetic. But, there was something about Komaeda’s personality in particular.

Komaeda Nagito was—a huge pain in the ass. Obsessive, manic, erratic, fickle, aggravating, temperamental, short-sighted, narrow-minded, stubborn, naïve, unstable, volatile, childish, elitist, and just overall, what one would call a piece of shit. He was also exceptionally cheerful, with a carefree air about to mask his million and a half anxieties. Well... To mask is probably inaccurate.

Komaeda Nagito might have just been a dim-witted, total fucking ditz. A ditz with dementia, at that. Which hit a little too close to home. Thank fucking god that the guy’s hair had already turned white because apparently, he had been a red head in youth and that would’ve just been the end of Matsuda Yasuke’s life. Just. Done. Thank you. Good-fucking-bye.

Alas, his life did not prematurely end, either incidentally thanks to a certain lucky dipshit or intentionally thanks to the worst fucking person on the planet. Should he be thankful? Fuck, no. Bitch, he did not ask to live past the ripe old age of twenty. But sometimes, life finds a way.

Well.

Kamukura Izuru found a way.

This still isn’t about him.

And not because Matsuda Yasuke never wants to think about him again. Promise. Promise.

Fuck.

He doesn’t even know what that freak is up to anymore, and thinking about him causes headaches that hurt like hell a thousand times over, so he just—doesn’t. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t feel. He doesn’t really do anything. Hasn’t been doing anything for a while, now. Turns out it’s hard to be active when the world is literally in shambles. Turns out depression gets real fucking nasty when everything is tumultuous and chaotic, especially outside. Funny how living starts to look more and more meaningless when people are just dying. One after another. All for the stupid fucking concept known as despair. Really—all because Junko told them to. And people are dumb. People are easy. People suck.

She’s dead now. Junko is. That sure happened.

It happened and now, everything is truly in a chaotic state. People are going haywire, with the Future Foundation even more in a rush to gain control, but with their manic fucking leader keen on stamping out every last bit of despair. Hopefully, they’re still focused on rescuing people. Many hostages had been taken after all.

Matsuda wonders about them. He probably should wonder about himself because in addition to being a dead man walking, he has more of a target on his back than usual. Fan-fucking-tastic. If only he cared. If only he had the energy to care. Somehow, along the road, he lost that after crying into the shoulder of a girl who only ever cared about destroying everything, including herself.

Isn’t that a shame.

Isn’t that unfortunate.

Komaeda Nagito sure thinks so. Even now, Komaeda Nagito tells him he thinks so. Clearly and repeatedly, as if depression made a guy deaf. With Junko gone, the idiot’s gotten super anxious and on edge, fiddling with a gloved hand and fidgeting. There’s other stuff to do, other stuff he’s planned for sure.

“Matsuda-kun...?”

But he’s still here, bothering Matsuda. Because Matsuda’s just that fucking lucky of a guy to have someone who cares so much.

“Matsuda-kun?”

Fucking pest. Not that Komaeda Nagito knows any better. Not that it’s unjustified, either, since Matsuda feels like everything is crashing down all around him. There’s not even a damn reason for it. His brain just decided to start feeling like shit because he’s that much of a self-destructive piece of shit. Of fucking course he was. He devoted himself to fucking Junko and for what? Just because she let him cry on her and never used it against him despite manipulating everything and everyone else?

What a joke. What a fucking joke.

“Ah. Alright.”

Even more of a fucking joke is Komaeda Nagito pulling him close. Komaeda Nagito patting his head. It’s so patronizing and cruel. It’s so infuriating that Matsuda’s shaking, squeezing his eyes shut as they stung, stung, stung.

Everything’s all wrong. It’s been all wrong, and it’s going to stay all wrong. There’s no fixing a world this fucking broken, and Matsuda knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s buried in the rubbish. It’s the only fate he really deserves, for all his stupid hard work and even fucking stupider ambitions. But, even if he knows this...

He still wants to be held like he had been back then.

And if Komaeda Nagito’s going to idiotically indulge him, Matsuda supposes the least he can do is not let go of him. Like anyone expected this to go any other way.

[nebula-horizon]

🍺 Celeste and Jericho

Send a symbol for a drabble or thread [ Not Accepting! ]

🍺: Our muses drinking together

I listened to Lover is a day while writing this

((In Which Celeste gets dating advice while listening to Lo-fi))

   It was an unusually uncrowded night at the bar. Celeste had come alone without her friends just to see and talk to her favorite bartender. Having dressed up a little nicer than she usually did, but nothing too flashy especially with how she did her makeup. A tan colored sweater crop top and high waisted jean shorts were picked out as she hoped to get his attention, but she'd find out that her efforts were wasted. 

   Darius calling in sick? Who knew a workaholic like him would concede to a cold and call out for the day. Celeste sat on the bar stool she usually did as Darius's co-worker let her know the situation. Her shoulders slumped at the news -- it was hard to not feel like she wasted her time coming here since he was the only reason she liked going to this bar to begin with. The pastel haired woman sat there with her hands folded on the bar counter as she debated whether it was a good idea to go see him or if that would make her look desperate. She grumbled something in Tagalog before putting her head face down on the bar and her arms over her head.

   Thanks to the less rowdy energy in the bar tonight, Celeste's ears picked up on the chuckle coming from the person seated a couple seats away from her. She nervously peeked out  from under her arm at the source which was a young man with dark purple hair and one arm leaning against the bar. He had a rather chic look to him as he took a sip of his martini which is why Celeste was unsure if he was the one laughing at her. She sat straight up, looking from him and then around her.

   “Were you laughing at me?” she asked with a slight accusatory tone. The purple haired man gave another low chuckle which somewhat confirmed it. 

   “What’s not to laugh at? There’s something amusing about watching someone this grown up acting like a child.” he admitted. Celeste so badly wanted to pout and get defensive, but that would only prove this stranger’s point. 

   “I’m not childish,” she muttered looking away. “I just feel like I wasted my time coming here…”. Celeste sighed, it’s not like this guy would understand and besides, she just made herself sound desperate. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed him getting up. Oh great, she just embarrassed and weirded out yet another patron -- this was not the reputation she wanted to have at Darius’s workspace. 

   “Well, do you not go out to bars to drink?”. Celeste looked back up, only to find the same man she thought she weirded out seated on the bar stool right next to her. The pastel haired woman jumped back in her seat a bit causing the man to laugh at her again. Which in turn made her face flush with embarrassment. It’s a good thing that the lights in the club started slowly shifting colors to conceal her reddened cheeks. 

   “L-look… I don’t… I don’t drink.” she quietly stuttered. “I hate alcohol, it’s a personal preference, but I just don’t like getting even a little tipsy.”. Celeste sighed, listening to the Lo-fi music that started playing over the speakers. “I usually come to this bar specifically because I-I… I kind of have a small crush on one of the bartenders.” she admitted, using crush very loosely.

   “A crush, huh? Hahaha… How cute.”. Celeste didn’t know how to respond without sounding like a nervous and flustered mess. She noticed the stranger flagged down the bartender, before leaning towards her just a bit. “What’s your favorite drink here?” he asked, fully intending on ordering her something non-alcoholic. 

   “M-mango lemonade, why-”. And it just dawned on Celeste. “Wait no, you don’t have to buy me a drink, mister-”. He waved off her protests with a gloved hand as he went to order the drink, leaving Celeste covering her face. Once again, he gave her a smirk, tilting his head to the side acting as though he were confused at her little reactions. It was clear this girl didn’t fit in with the whole bar or club scene; like watching a fish out of water. "What are you even trying to do?" She asked him as though he had some kind of ulterior motives. Still hiding her face behind her hands, she was starting to feel flustered with this guy sitting right next to her this closely. 

   "What am I trying to do?" He repeated. "Well, I'm typically a busy man, but I figured I'd take some time to entertain myself.". Celeste moved her hands from her face as she watched the man sip some more on his martini. 

   "Is making girls feel embarrassed how you entertain yourself?". She huffed. 

   "Not exactly -- it's just mildly amusing seeing drunk people humiliate themselves. I've already seen quite a few tonight.". The bartender came back sliding over the fruity concoction to Celeste. "What’s your name?" The stranger asked. There was no way in hell she was giving this guy her real name. 

   “...Celeste, and you?”. She took a sip of her mango lemonade as she stared at him; the slow changing colorful neon lights of the club illuminating both of them. 

   “Jericho.”. He held a gloved hand out to shake hers and Celeste hesitantly reciprocated. “So do you only come here for this bartender?”. Despite being thirsty and infatuated by Darius, Celeste wasn’t going to let Jericho say it out loud. 

   “A-at first it wasn’t like that. I usually only like going out with friends because I like dancing.” She noticed him raising a brow when she said that, making her look away -- she hated when people stared at her like this. “Then I met Darius here while he was working… He was so nice to me. Protecting me from creepy men and talking with me when I felt scared to head to the dance floor. It’s like he could read me so easily when I was upset and he always knows how to make me smile when I need it.”. Celeste paused for a moment as she felt herself smile softly at the memory of their first meeting. Her mind taking in the music on the speakers as she almost got lost in thought.

♫Suffocated from the radiated air around us

Full of happiness we don't have

Brightness gone so dark

Without you girl♫

   She could feel Jericho’s stare on her, almost snapping her out of her trance. Shyly looking back to him to meet his electric blue gaze, Celeste gave a weak smile. 

   “Sorry, I’m rambling. I just… I know he wouldn’t date me.”. Jericho stared at her then at his empty martini glass, setting it down before leaning his arm against the bar as he spoke to the shy starry eyed girl across from him. It was so oddly comforting to let out her woes to a stranger because in her mind she wasn’t expecting to ever see him again after tonight.

   “And why not? You seem like a nice young lady,” he said, catching Celeste off guard. “Have you actually tried asking him out?”. That was a good question and in all honesty, she really hadn’t. There was something almost endearing with the way she thought about the question before looking down at her hands that she had firmly on her lap. “Heh, I’m guessing that’s a ‘No’?”. Jericho stared curiously as the shorter of the two sighed before she moved a strand of her pastel purple hair from her face and looked back at him. Her deep tan colored skin had the neon lights of the club illuminating it as the two of them had shades of blue and purple wash over them from spotlights.  

   “Yeah… You’re right, I haven’t tried asking him. I guess I’m just not confident enough in myself.”. Celeste watched as Jericho chuckled at her again. “H-hey come on, what’s so funny?”. 

   “Heh, nothing. It just seems so strange to me that a girl -- who’d willingly put herself out there and dance with such confidence in herself -- believes that she’s lacking in the ability to charm someone.” he stated. It seemed like Jericho was trying to insinuate something to boost her a bit, but was it a genuine compliment or was he just curious to see how she’d react out of boredom? It didn’t matter as Celeste hadn’t picked up on the tone in his voice.

   “Well… Yeah. I do think that. You don’t really think I’m actually charming or cute enough to boldly ask him out,  do you?” Celeste sighed. That smirk appeared on his face again except Celeste didn’t look away nervously from him again. Her eyes didn’t break eye contact with his own.

   “And what if I do?” he asked. “What if I thought you were cute in a demure way?”. Jericho said all this knowing very well she couldn’t respond properly -- it seemed like he was enjoying seeing her quickly become sheepish. Even under all the slow changing colored lights, he can tell her face was blushing at his words. “Haha, you should try asking this Darius fellow out,” he expressed with that laughter Celeste has now come to find sickly captivating. “I’m sure he’d love to see you blush in embarrassment when you attempt to.”. 

   There was a moment of peaceful silence between them besides the music on the speakers while Celeste quietly sipped on her mango lemonade drink till she was finished. 

   “Perhaps it was a good thing she wasn’t an alcohol drinker…” he thought to himself. Jericho saw as Celeste slowly stood up, hands fidgeting with the end of her sweater crop top anxiously. 

   “You’re right, I-I can’t ever know the answer if I never try shooting my shot, you know?” Celeste stammered. “Er… O-Okay! I’ll go home and call to see if I can visit him later…” she shyly said with a nod, Jericho’s words reassuring her. It was a little hard to find a proper response to being enamored by an utter stranger, yet Celeste wanted to give him some kind of thank you. Awkwardly holding her hand out again, the bracelet around her wrist jingling. “Thanks for listening to me… I-it was nice meeting you, Jericho.”.

   “The pleasure’s all mine.” he responded without missing a beat, shaking her hand once more.

   “U-um… D-do you think I’ll see you again sometime?” Celeste asked. She hadn’t noticed her hand lingered in his hold for a bit before pulling it back quickly. 

   “Perhaps you’ll see me again,” Jericho lied, knowing how dangerous it’d be if she found out what he did for a living. “Besides, I’m sure I won’t forget your face.”. He really had to get that last jab in, huh? It looked like his last little compliment worked as Celeste gave him one more shy sweet expression, only this time she was smiling. “See you, around, Celeste.”.

   “Y-yeah… see ya, Jericho…”. The starry eyed woman left in a hurry, covering her face with the sleeve of her sweater on her way out. Jericho grinned as she left before ordering another drink from the bartender. As the song came to it’s last chorus, he began humming along softly, thinking how nice it would be if he allowed himself to see her again .

♫Time changed

We're different

But my mind still says redundant things

Can I not think?

Will you love this part of me

My lover is a day I can't forget

Furthering my distance from you

Realistically I can't leave now

But I'm okay as long as you

Keep me from going crazy

Keep me from going crazy♫