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tickletastic · 6 years

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I Believe Submarines

Title: I Believe Submarines

Rating: G/SFW

Warnings: Possible spoilers?

Word Count: 1302

Fandom: We Were Liars

Ship: Gat + Cadence

Summary: With the Liars there’s no such thing as just a peaceful afternoon on the tiny beach. Cadence finds out her boyfriend is ticklish and shenanigans ensue. Ticklish!Gat

Notes: This is based around the song Submarines by The Lumineers. The song really reminds me of the Liars and there’s a line in it which actually really relates to the story (“Everyone thinks I’m a liar, no one knows the truth. If it was a bigger fire, I would be on the roof”). Anyways, this is an AU where Mirren, Gat, and Johnny don’t die in the fire, and this is set in Summer Seventeen.

The Liars had noted a particularly quiet day on Beechwood. It was a sunny afternoon and The Littles had taken the boat to Edgartown with grandpa Harris, while the aunties were enjoying wine and cheese in New Clairmont. After the fire all of the differences had dissolved and the aunties got along again, much like the days of their childhood. Grandpa Harris could no longer manipulate them into playing his games, so he found other, less harmful ways to entertain himself, like teaching the Liars how to fish, and guiding them with the redecoration of Cuddledown so the four of them could live together for the summer.

Currently, the four of them were lazing on the Tiny Beach, drinking various types of fizzy pop while they engaged in a heated debate.

“Now I’m not saying that sunscreen is useless, but if a ghost got a tan wouldn’t that make it visible to the naked eye?” Johnny yelled, making ridiculous hand gestures towards Mirren.

“Ghosts are just energy Johnny, they don’t even have skin to tan,” Gat calmly responded, looping his fingers in with Cadence’s.

Cadence and Mirren giggled at the odd topic of conversation, but they didn’t question it, knowing that their cousin was probably saying some things to rile Gat up. Gat was always all about philosophy and logic, so Johnny’s new hobby was to begin a conversation about a completely ridiculous topic to see how logical of an explanation he could receive. The conversations usually ranged from silly to intense, but when they got too serious Cady would sneak in a kiss on Gat’s cheek to calm him down. Today’s conversation was growing in heat by every passing word, but today Mirren decided to interject.

“Hey look Johnny! It’s a submarine!” Mirren screeched, pointing out into the vast blue sea.

“There is not!” Johnny got on his knees, leaning closer to the water in order to get a better field of vision. As children, they would always go to the tiny beach and play pretend, imaging submarines and giant ocean creatures, so Johnny played along. Johnny opened his mouth to respond once he had fully leaned forward, but he was interrupted. Mirren placed her hand on the back of his head and dunked him in the shallow water of the shore. Gat smiled at the scene as Cady and Mirren laughed hysterically, watching Johnny spit sand out of his mouth. He choked for a second until the rest of the water and sand had evacuated his lungs. Mirren helped by patting his back, but it didn’t aid much due to her constant laughter.

Johnny grabbed out for her, wiggling his fingers over her sides that were exposed due to the lack of cover her bikini offered. Mirren threw her head back and fell to the sand beneath her.

“Johohohohony stahahahahahap,” Mirren giggled, pushing at her cousin’s hands. Johnny quickly stopped, feeling as if Mirren had enough.

“Mir’s ticklish? No way,” Gat inquired, having never known the sensitivities of his friend.

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised, you’re basically a tickle-me-elmo,” Johnny teased in response to Gat’s curiosity. Gat blushed a deep red and looked down at his hands. Cadence looked over at her boyfriend, putting her hand softly against his cheek and forcing him to look up despite his avoidance of eye contact.

“That’s so cute,” She spoke softly, scratching lightly at the boy’s ear. Gat frowned, trying to keep his stoic nature despite the tickly touches gracing the tip of his left ear. Cadence cooed slightly at the sight of her grumbly boyfriend slowly losing it under her slim fingers.

“D-don’t Cad, tickling’s i-immature.” Gat stuttered through his gritted teeth.

“Really? You didn’t seem to think that a few minutes ago,” Cadence noted in response to her boyfriend’s needy pleas.

Even though Mirren had been joking, Gat became suddenly hyperactively interested in the make-believe world she had created in her false game of pretend. “I see the sub too!” He shouted, literally jumping up and away from Cady’s hands.

The eldest of them certainly wasn’t finished her investigation, shooting up like a rocket when the warmth of her boyfriend left her side.

“Gat even I think we’re a bit too old to be playing pretend,” Johnny began, looking up at his friend, “Marco polo on the other hand, not it!”

The other three called out and argued over the subject of who would be it in one of their endless games of marco polo, until it was decided that Cady would be the seeker. Everyone scattered as she loudly counted to ten, spinning in circles within the waist-deep water.

“Marco!” She cried out, slightly dizzy from counting.

“Polo!” Cried out only two voices in response.

“Gat, you have to say polo too!” Johnny snickered at Cadence’s words, basking in the glory that was the absolute fear in Gat’s eyes.

“Polo,” The boy whispered, a single foot in front of Cady. She acted as if she was going to reach out in front of her in order grab her boyfriend, but instead she stuck her arms out to the left of her, knowing exactly which way her boyfriend would turn to flee.

Cady caught Gat from behind, wrapping her arms around his body, successfully trapping him in her hold.

“Cady, no! Let me go!” Gat struggled to get out, making ripples while he flailed his arms.

“Did you know,” The low whispers sent shivers down the boy’s spine, “The tickle monster lives underwater?” Her fingers dug into the vulnerable ribs at her mercy.

“Ehehehehe Cahahahady dohohohohont!” Gat squealed, throwing his head back into his girlfriend’s chest.

Cadence’s fingers against his abdomen were clumsy, probably due to her lack of siblings and the rare occurrence of seeing her cousins, but somehow that made the unknowing touches far more sensitive against Gat’s bare skin. He felt as nimble fingers counted every single one of his protruding ribs. Each touch, no matter how small, felt like agony to the boy as he helplessly giggled and squirmed about in the water.

“Aww, tickle tickle baby boy, coochie coochie coo!” Cadence teased her typically stoic and serious boyfriend. “You don’t laugh enough, thanks to Johnny I know just what to do to hear you.”

“Stop Cahahady! Ihihihim nahahat a bahaby, leheheheheave me ALOHOHOHONE! STAHAHAHAP!” Gat shrieked when a single finger wiggled its way into his belly button.

“Aww lovely, you’re sure just as ticklish and cute as a baby, are you sure you aren’t one?” Cadence giggled when she noticed her boyfriend’s ear had turned a darker shade of red. Mirren and Johnny just laughed at the sight unfolding in front of them.

The younger boy’s head was so far back that it nearly looked painful, so Cadence stuck her cold lips into the crook of his neck, blowing slightly.

“CAHAHAHADY! Stahahahp juhuhuhust lehehehet mehehe behehehe!” A stream of almost incoherent chuckles. Cadence was basking in the joyous, childlike laughter of the 17-year-old that she was taking apart with just her fingers.

Gat felt completely silly because of his extreme sensitivities. Cady was completely disassembling him and she made him feel like he was a child again. Despite his constant protests he couldn’t help but enjoy letting loose like he was. At this point, he was giggling so quickly and uninhibited that a series of snorts fell out of him.

Cady’s fingers stilled, and she ran her fingers over spot again, receiving the same reaction. She stopped again and watched as Gat turned as red as possible.

“You’re so cute,” Cady leaned over to press a sweet kiss on her boyfriend’s cheek. She only received a whine in response. “You’re cute, but you’re it.”

She ran as far away from him as possible as he attempted to quickly recover from her onslaught.

“Marco!”

“Polo!”

#we were liars #Cadence Sinclair Eastman #Gat patil #Johnny Sinclair Dennis #Mirren Sinclair Sheffield #ticklish!gat #The Liars #tickle fic #ticklish #tickle fiction

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summerfitzy · 7 years

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courting miss sætre (3/6)

Fandom: SKAM Ship: Noora x William Summary: Miss Noora Sætre has ambitions of spinsterhood; Mr. William Magnusson has other ideas.

(The wildly anachronistic regency era au that literally no one asked for)

ao3

Norman Ames’s first novel had entranced London from its first sentence to its last period. The thick volume sat in every bookstore, every household, and on most every bedside table for months. It dominated drawing room conversation and literary debates. It shocked and offended and awed and addicted and, most of all, intrigued.

Everyone knew that Norman Ames was a pseudonym. Everyone believed they knew why too. Cecilia was, by every measure, a scandal clad in print; a chronicle of every topic scorned by polite conversation and feasted upon by closed-door-gossip. Ames had woven a common enough story, the ruin of an innocent girl—yet in a way that sympathized with her even in her worst moments.

Unheard of. Enthralling. Even readers who went red in the face over the book’s politics and societal censure could not put it down from cover page to back cover. Those readers might have keeled over altogether had they discovered that the most shocking, most popular novel of the year had been written by a young, single woman.

(No one could ever discover that. No one would ever believe that a young, single woman could write such a convincing picture of sexual awakening and social ruin without having experienced it for herself.)

It pained Noora, on a visceral level, to write under a man’s name—but she needed the book to sell as well as literarily possible, and she wished to remain relatively unknown. The fact that Mr. Vasquez had lent his publishing connections to her, that Eva had convinced him to act as a go-between, came as nothing short of a miracle.

And Noora was not in the habit of taking miracles for granted—certainly not the money she had made through her writing. The ability to support herself without her parents, without a husband, had always sounded like a pretty, Christmas Eve dream. The kind that crept behind a child’s eyes before she hurried down the stairs the next day, only to discover a pile of impersonal presents.

No matter how many book payments she opened, Noora would never lose the thrill of unwrapping something she truly wanted.

A candle burned in the corner as Noora kept scribbling and scribbling, late into the night. She could not know that her second novel would do quite as well… only that it would stir just as much controversy. Especially in London. Her first book had picked at the mores of country life; this one would illuminate the unfairness of the Season for its debutantes.

The last several weeks had provided plenty of fodder. The last day had provided even more.

(Noora wondered if a character named William would fool anyone.)

Over the next week, Noora suffered several more invitations to dance from William Magnusson. The usual interaction went something like so:

“Shall we dance a waltz?”

“I’ve hurt my foot.”

A glance at her dance card. “You’re dancing the sets before and after.”

A shrug.

She received several more calls from him too. Noora refused them all. His cards sat beside her manuscript, tucked away out of sight—along with the messages he left scrawled on them.

Words no one else should see.

You were the prettiest girl in the room last night and What do I have to do to convince you to dance with me? and Bloody hell, you’re so beautiful.

As for the most hidden, the most secret, the most worrisome of them all: You had ink on your hands the other day. No shock that you’re a bluestocking.

Comments about her beauty—Noora had grown used to those, vain as she felt admitting it. Maybe her heart sped, on occasion, at the proof that William Magnusson thought her so pretty, but reality always slowed it soon enough. He thought she was pretty because she kept evading him. Because she was a novelty who did not care about marrying him.

Observations about her ink-stained hand—she could not trust him with those.

Noora had to remember that he thought her a pretty, diverting game. Nothing more.

(The novel was almost finished. She would not rewrite hundreds of pages to weave in a character named William. She would not.)

(She didn’t. She named him Willhelm.)

Though Mr. Magnusson kept creeping into Noora’s writing and head and sights, she could not forget that Mr. Schistad deserved her fuller attention. William had not actually done anything to her, other than heat her blood like a raging teakettle.

Christoffer Schistad, however, persisted in doing plenty—namely, flirting with Eva at every possible opening. Noora did not know what to make of the fact that Eva persisted in letting him, in smiling at him like she wanted him to carry on.

So, when Noora sought William Magnusson out again, she only did so for Eva’s sake.

“Miss Noora Amalie Sætre,” he said through a smile when he saw her. “Have you changed your mind about our dance?”

Noora crossed her arms. Her full name seemed to have become a loophole for him, a way of uttering her Christian name without propriety’s—or her—permission.

(Arrogant cad.)

“Have you changed your mind about speaking to Mr. Schistad?”

William’s eyes rolled up towards the ceiling before sliding back down to meet hers. “He’s my friend, not my servant. I appreciate your confidence in my authority, but it doesn’t extend to him.” A beat. “Or to you, apparently.”

“So you’re not going to do anything,” Noora summarized.

Ballroom chatter buzzed behind and around them. Footsteps too. So many reminders that they had a swarm of people surrounding them—and yet Noora could only register William’s voice, kept low so as to elude any ears save their own. “I didn’t say that.”

“So you will do something?”

“I didn’t say that either.”

Noora was half-tempted to drop her arms, just for the satisfaction of crossing them again. “What do you want?” she asked, forced herself to ask, finally.

He stared at her.

There was blushing, there was ‘flying one’s colors,’ and then there was the pink heating her cheeks at present.

“If I speak to Chris again,” he said, “we will take that stroll through Hyde Park together.”

Noora bit her lip.

“And,” he added, “you will stop ‘hurting your foot’ every time I ask you to dance.”

He sounded so exasperated there that Noora had to bite down on her lip even harder, just to stab her smile away. “Perhaps I’m injury prone.”

“The first dance of the night.” His mouth curved too. “Do we have a deal, Miss Sætre?”

Noora let her lower lip, pinched thoroughly colorless now, slip free from her teeth. She glanced over to the other side of the room—and saw Christoffer Schistad standing considerably too close to Eva as he smirked something too close to her ear. As she laughed back.

She shifted her glance slightly. As Jonas Vasquez stood by the room’s threshold, squinting at them.

“Yes,” she said, sighed. “We have a deal.”

(She no longer had to wonder what William Magnusson’s grin looked like.)

Hyde Park offered a good deal of loveliness in early summer. So much green beneath them in the grass, blue above them in the sky, blue beyond them in the water. Cheery flowers and leafy trees swaying around them in the soft breeze.

Noora had crossed her arms the minute she’d first begun to enjoy the weather, and hadn’t uncrossed them yet. Of course Mr. Magnusson would choose a pleasant day for their stroll—a day when half the ton would be out strolling too, taking note of the title-less, connection-less, wealth-less girl with whom he had chosen to spend his afternoon.

At least he had brought one of his more matronly maids to chaperone, albeit from a few steps behind them.

“My grandmother used to take me here,” William said, interrupting the nature-chirped quiet that had settled between them, “when I was younger.” He pointed to the wavering shallows of the Serpentine River. “She told me that the river had sea monsters lurking beneath the surface so that I’d stop trying to swim in it.” A beat, a crook of his lips. “I was terrified.”

Noora said nothing, gave him nothing. She hadn’t promised him her conversation, only her presence.

“I think she felt guilty eventually,” he went on, “because she told me later that there were beautiful things too. Mermaids, naiads—water nymphs.”

“I know what naiads are,” she interrupted, then pressed her lips together. As though it mattered whether or not he thought her intelligent.

His lips crooked even more curved. “Of course.”

As though he knew anything about her. “Do you think this will charm me?”

He blinked. “This?”

“This,” she repeated, waving a hand through the air. “Your childhood story about your grandmother, the sunny day in the park. Do you think we’re in a Jane Austen novel?”

“Jane Austen writes romances,” he said. “Do you think we are?”

Noora considered looking up at the sun, just to blind herself to his blatant amusement, but settled for tilting her eyes to the top of an unusually tall tree instead. “No.” A pause. “And her books aren’t only romances. She writes social critiques.”

“Like you do.”

Her breath, her composure, her feet—they all stumbled at once. Noora might have stumbled right over the utterly flat, utterly groomed ground, had William not darted a hand out to steady her. His arms anchored her waist for a slip of a second—long enough for her to feel how unexpectedly strong, unexpectedly hard they were, even through the sleeves of his tailcoat.

“I’m assuming,” he amended. He dropped his arms and palms from her muslin.

(The solid warmth of both still haunted her abdomen.)

“Why?” she did her best to reestablish her footing and her voice. “Because I happened to have ink stained hands one afternoon?”

William pointed to her gown’s grass-stained hem with his eyes.

Noora bit back a sigh. Fine. So perhaps she had not reacted with the utmost subtlety. “There was a branch. And I was writing a letter to a friend before you called. One of the women you’ve used.”

When he squinted at her, she knew it had nothing to do with the beaming sun.

“Miss Vilde Lien? You made her think you were going to offer for her.”

He ducked beneath a crooked tree branch. “How did I do that?”

"You—you danced with her. And flirted with her. You made her think that you liked her.”

Daylight seemed to glint from William’s eyes when he caught hers. “Is it my fault if a person can’t tell the difference between politeness and interest?”

She couldn’t understand how he’d made it so challenging to look away from him, to retort, to believe her own words when she spoke next. “You could have been polite without leading her on.” But Noora had spent the beginning of the Season bemoaning the fact that Vilde could not read Mr. Magnusson’s obvious lack of intentions towards her. He had a point.

“Miss Lien seems fine now.”

He had a point there too. Noora kept silent rather than admit so aloud.

“Is that all you write?” William asked, once it became clear that Noora did not mean to say anything more. “Letters to Miss Lien?” At some point, they had ambled over to the shore of the river. At another point, they seemed to have stopped there.

Noora wished a hard breeze would push him in. “Why do you care?”

A family of ducks waddled and quacked behind him, oblivious to the tension ironing the air above them. “How else will we get to know each other?”

“You don’t care about getting to know me.” He wanted her admiration, because he could not conceive of a woman’s indifference to him. That was all.

But he did not so much as pause before replying, “Yes, I do.” He did not smirk either. His face did not move at all, but remained as still as the rest of his body, exhaling an emotion that Noora refused to call earnestness.

She swallowed. “Tell me something about yourself then,” she said, then told herself she’d only opened her mouth to crack the intensity of his regard. “Something real.”

That startled him out of his stillness. He deliberated for a moment, before raising one hand into her view and pulling off its leather glove with the other. Ink-stains smudged his fingers.

She’d assumed he would say something cocky, something cliché, something she could scorn him for. “You write?” Noora hated that he’d surprised her.

A small smirk. “You know I write.”

“You did not stain your fingers like that leaving calling cards for me.”

He shrugged, running a hand through his hair. “Why should I tell you what I write, if you won’t tell me?”

Because ‘unfulfilled curiosity’ and ‘withheld knowledge’ swished like wine in Noora’s mouth—which might have sounded like a compliment, if one were unaware of Noora’s inability to handle even a glass of elder wine. “Is it love poetry?” she asked, a twinge of humor sneaking onto her tongue despite her best efforts at swallowing it. “Is that why you’re so popular?”

He shook his head and his smile down at the ground. “I don’t write love poetry.”

“Love songs then?”

His eyes rose back to hers. Definitely smiling. “Would you like me to write you a love song, Miss Sætre?”

“No.” And then, because she couldn’t push the banter back down her throat: “I enjoy music too much.”

Laughter wrote itself onto the lines of William’s face, but didn’t leak from his mouth. “Would you like me to dedicate a travel journal to you?”

If they were still walking, surprise might have stolen her footing again. “A travel journal?”

“Yes.” Once she gave him her attention and her gaze, he refused to surrender either. “I spent the last year touring the Continent. That’s what I write about.”

She shouldn’t have asked. She shouldn’t have pushed. She really, really shouldn’t have, because Noora had several travel books on her shelves, all creased of spine, and would give anything to go to the places between their covers. “The whole Continent?”

“Let me tell you over a waltz some night.” A pause. “Your turn, Miss Sætre.”

And even though she shouldn’t give him the satisfaction or the advantage of a reply, of a single thought from her head… “I like drinking chocolate. More than tea or lemonade or champagne or any other drink.”

“Drinking chocolate,�� he echoed.

“Especially once it’s gone cold.” The sleeves of her dress sighed against her shoulder blades when she shrugged. “Two facts about me.”

William remained motionless. He stood there, staring at her rather than out at the water, as the sun caught the gold in his dark locks and the smile flickering on his lips. His flickered grin.

For that breath of seamless, cloudless sunlight, Noora could not help but smile back.

#noorhelm #noora x william #william x noora #skam #fanfiction #otp: we have to be together #my writing #noorhelm regency era au

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