#Ursa Muses
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Streamed a bit of Magic ridiculousness over on Twitch & made some Treasure tokens on Card Conjurer.
These are specifically for my Gruul Treasure deck lovingly called "The Dame Patrol". I do think I've gotten the taste for making my own tokens now.
This is a dangerous revelation.
My decks are going to get sillier.
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To me it's so interesting how Avatar (tla) manages his villains
Zuko by all accounts looks at first like a classic kid show villain
Always shouting, not extremely threatening and with scars to make him look more evil
And then the show does a 180 and is like "yeah but getting that scar wouldn't have been painful viewer?" And the viewer who has no real reason to hate Zuko beside him being a normal villain is like "oh shit"
Iroh is that classic side kick of the villain, to make him look funnier to the kids
But then the show kinda hits you with a bat when you realize that this guy loves the other like a son and like aaaahhh despite all the shit he did in life (let's not forget he was complacent in the war) he is such a good force that a lot of people FORGET THAT
Azula.... Azula is fucking terryfing and that's perfect! She in more ways then one follows Zuko steps of the evil guy, just a little less cartoony but still pretty basic, like she is ruthless and doesn't stop
Then the show is like "i mean yeah but she is also a very fragile teenager with the worst father in the world as only parent" and that is so so fucking painful? Like the final Agni Kai to me NEVER really felt like a triumphant Victory but more like... A sad relief? Like it's finally over and they can all heal now
Ozai... Ozai fucking sucks and that's amazing
Because.
A story needs a villain that the viewer needs to root against
Ozai is pretty one dimensional, but he thrives as a villain because EVERYONE ELSE in his (current alive) family is so well written!
It doesn't matter why Ozai is such a megalomaniac abusive piece of shit
Because the only thing we need to hate him it's provided and justified since episode 1
But. I think as a kid it really surprised me how... "Refined" he looked.
He isn't burly or his face is in a permanent scowl
He is by all standards a pretty boy. (Which is funny to think about)
But then he smiles and you realize that oh. This bitch is the creepiest bastard we have seen so far
(i personally think Zhao was a prototype, they share *a lot* of characteristics)
Anyway i just though it was neat.
#lagt yells#atla#random musings#also fuck Ursa.#woman is a terrible person and i would have preferred if she was actually dead in post canon#azula#zuko#iroh#ozai
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Thinking about if Ursa had darker skin like the villagers in The Painted Lady and how that would affect the palace life suddenly thrust upon her where ivory skin is favored.
#ursa comes from a small town in the middle of a tropical climate#she gonna have some melanin#strange how atla never touches on colorism#even within communities#that said i'm drawing ursa with tan skin from now on#atla#ursa#atla comics#musing#colorism
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Ursa isn’t thrilled with EVERY situation she gets into...
But they usually work out for the best~
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tag dump!
#[ wake up! you've got a lot to do today . ic ]#[ you stick out like a bear in an oceanic environment . crossover verse ]#[ a real-ass goddamned sword . crack ]#[ only a minor but the problem's ursa major . musing ]#[ now that's what i call a beartrap . visage ]#[ grab the hooch and then we scooch . ooc ]#i'll add more later if i need em blehhhh
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HONEYKEAT’s WINTER MUSES
cloudy day mitchell (28) has entered the chat!
cloudy day is now available to write with as a winter muse!
echo hancock (26) has entered the chat!
echo is now available to write with as a winter muse!
gavin bond (27) has entered the chat!
gavin is now available to write with as a winter muse!
nathan prince (24) has entered the chat!
nathan is now available to write with as a winter muse!
rolf jana (21) has entered the chat!
rolf is now available to write with as a winter muse!
ursa sullivan (24) has entered the chat!
ursa is now available to write with as a winter muse!
#winter muse#test muse#ursa sullivan#rolf jana#nathan prince#gavin bond#echo hancock#cloudy day mitchell
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Stargazing
(soft supercorp ficlet, post-6)
She’s always wanted to be in love.
Lena pulled the blanket around her shoulders tighter, as she glanced to the kryptonian opening up a thermos of hot chocolate. Kara passed the filled lid cup to Lena, as she tipped the thermos to her lips, taking a small sip. Lena pulled her own cup to her lips as Kara pointed up at the night sky. “Argo City is about there,” she said, Lena following her finger somewhere west. “And Rao is about there,” she continued, pointing farther south.
She’s always wanted to be in love.
Alex’s words rang in Lena’s mind. It had been a small, quiet conversation. Lena had counted herself lucky, that after everything - her betrayal, Non Nocere, Kara going to the phantom zone - that she had been able to find family in the end. That the people around her had forgiven her. That for the first time in her life, she found peace.
It had been a calm morning, her and Alex - the early risers - having coffee in the Tower, musing about life. The chat had inevitably landed on Kara, Lena finding herself constantly curious about what it had been like to grow up with an alien for a sister, a refugee who had struggled to adjust.
She’s always wanted to be in love.
And now Lena found herself gazing at the kryptonian, knowing that her expression would be revealingly wistful if Kara’s sights were not fixed to the sky as she rambled. Couldn’t she just fall for me? Lena thought, trying to chase off the melancholy.
It was the third Friday in a row where Kara had gently lifted Lena from the Tower balcony, taking her up to a flatter portion of the roof, the sky open above them. National City was a bit too bright to see anything as marvelous as the Milky Way. But the planets, Ursa Major, Orion’s belt - all shone brightly in the sky.
Kara rambled amiably about an old friend’s telescope, how she’d fly it over to the Tower next time so that they could see Saturn’s rings. Lena smiled softly, soothed by the sound of Kara’s voice, the gentle vibration that Lena could feel in her chest from their snuggled position. But it just itched at her mind - what is it that Kara wanted out of life? Had things changed?
Kara paused in her ramblings, smiling curiously at Lena. “Are you okay? Warm enough?”
“I’m plenty warm,” Lena said, pulling her blanket in tighter. “Just thinking.”
“About what?” Kara said, wrapping her arms around the human, as though to offer help in fighting away the cold evening.
Lena glanced up at Kara, uncertain if… this was a conversation they should really have. But with the warm blues staring back at her, with the itch in the back of her mind- “Alex said…” Lena found her voice faltering.
Kara rubbed at Lena’s back soothingly, as she tilted her head curiously.
“Alex said… you always wanted to be in love.”
Kara’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she replied, the word seeming to fall from her lips. “I- well.”
“Sorry,” Lena said, somewhat flustered. Why did I bring this up? “We can drop it, it’s a weird conversation.”
“It’s fine, Lena, it’s just - I am in love.” Kara’s eyes hesitantly glanced to the side, before meeting Lena’s face again. “I’ve been in love for years.”
Lena’s stomach plummeted, suddenly feeling anxious. “Oh,” she said. “But you’re… not with them,” Lena mulled contemplatively, her wistfulness tied up in some sadness. Because as much as she wanted Kara... more than anything, she just wished Kara could be happy.
Kara’s gaze left Lena, turning her head back up to the stars. “It wasn’t until I was in love that I realized I didn’t have to be loved back.”
“Anyone would love you,” Lena said.
“Not anyone,” Kara replied, glancing down at the roof. “Sometimes, things aren’t meant to be.”
“Who are you in love with?” Lena asked, the words falling from her lips before she could think to stop them.
Lena didn’t miss the way Kara’s throat tensed, a nervous swallow as she resolutely avoided Lena’s eyes. “You know, Lena. You have to know.”
Something tentative bloomed in Lena’s chest. A yearning, a hope. A realization that washed over her. Oh.
It almost felt silly, in retrospect, Lena’s mind parsing through the relationship. Because she thought she had been obvious, with the Valentine flowers, and she had taken the hint when the reporter had emphasized that they were good friends.
But… flying to Dublin, and Paris, just to give Lena a treat? The sobbing confession, that explained the line that Kara could never cross. Risking the world, in a fight to save Lena’s soul. For a friend like you, there are no boundaries.
She didn’t speak. Instead, she lifted her hand to Kara’s cheek, gently turning Kara’s face to her own. Kara glanced nervously back, her eyes shifting slowly between Lena’s eyes, when the truth of what they had both been wrestling with began to wash over her too. A shy smile, a small laugh. After a moment, Lena found her eyes drifting to Kara’s lips.
Lena smiled again, noting as Kara’s tongue darted out, wetting her lips in subconscious anticipation. Lena leaned forward as Kara’s head tilted in, Lena closing the gap to press her lips against the kryptonian’s.
They savored the brief meeting of lips, knowing that soon would come a time for passion and desire - but not now, not yet. On this roof, beneath the planets and Rao and the open sky, they only shared their intent.
Kara pulled away slightly, eyes still closed as she tilted her head to the side, nuzzling against Lena’s cheek in a silent confession that finally gave Lena the courage to say what she needed to say. “I love you too.”
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scoring a job at the tea shop was too easy. but now that he’s staring at bowl of jasmine flowers next to the black blend, it might have been a dumb idea. it’s not busy enough to numb his stupid brain.
the owner, mr. dugu, a short middle aged man with greasy long hair, was all too happy to hire him. we could use a looker like you, it’ll bring all the women in!
lu ten thinks back to zhao and jiro in dismay. he highly doubts his love life will ever heal itself back to normalcy. azula would agree with that.
it’s probably for the best that zhao doesn’t know where i am, he muses, but jiro would probably try and send me money.
now that he thinks about it, mr. dugu kind of reminds him of jiro. just a few decades older, and in green. a slick and stout guy that thinks he’s all that and a bag of fireflakes. so slick, you wouldn’t see the earnest, hard working gentleman hidden beneath at first.
but his dad is in there too. with the crows feet, receding hairline, deep tea scent, big hands. laughter in his eyes, at just about anything.
in the tea shop, however, his dad is everywhere he looks. his dad is the smells, the old tea cup rings stained in the tables, every sun ray shining through the windows, the cheap peeling wallpaper with painted leaves floating in the wind.
is it betrayal, what he’s done? or is he just dying on the hill of what his gut tells him is right?
he’s forcing his heart and his gut to become one, so he can physically stand loving his father, but not liking his father, simultaneously. letting them both exist together, at the same time. it’s not life ruining or earth shattering. it just… is.
lu ten misses the parts of his dad that he enjoyed, with great guilt. the roughhousing, the morning meditation, a warm hand brushing through his feathery hair, carrying him to bed after a long day at the beach, dropping his bags and letting lu ten barrel into his arms at full force after weeks being gone, bickering over the do’s and don’ts of tea. things got spotty and more spaced out once he turned double digits, because at that point lu ten was old enough to go longer without seeing his father. he was a busy guy and lu ten had been okay with that. he’s never been someone that needed constant attention, anyway.
but those parts were only enough to satisfy the young lu ten who didn’t care what his dad was outside of being his dad. then his aunt was married into the family, and lu ten started caring about a whole lot of things.
his aunt and his cousins give him purpose. what would he be, without them? they shape his interests, his entire worldview, his habits, his sense of self. the areas of politics and legislation that he dipped his toes in as a prince were even influenced by them. he tells right from wrong by wondering, if it was your aunt and your cousins, would you be okay with it?
what ursa went through after having azula haunted his dreams. the afterbirth stench, her hyperventilating, hoarse wails. the fire sages and azulon and ozai all muttering to each other, just to add to the chaos. he’d gripped little zuko to his chest in the dark corridor across from her chambers like a vice, biting his lip in terror and cheeks flushing as hot tears rolled down his face. it was the worst thing he’d ever heard in his life, and nobody seemed to care.
then he finds out that his mother went through the same thing with him over morning tea with his grandfather. casually, like he was being informed of the weather.
she believed she had the right to name you toshiro, despite not showing any enthusiasm over you at any other time of day, azulon had grunted. i don’t know why he ever bothered with that commoner wretch. you’d still have a mother today if he hadn’t picked some halfwit dancer with a smart mouth, you know. i even went through the trouble of setting up a whole line of good, wellborn women right before him, and he didn’t entertain a single one! but i suppose it doesn’t matter now, seeing the fine young man you’ve become regardless. i was afraid you’d inherit her crassness, if you’ll forgive me.
so she got sick of the shit and disappeared. to this day, he barely knows what to do with that information.
he hates ozai for doing the same shit to his aunt that his own father did to his mom. forced, unwanted marriage. the pain and misery of childbirth. postpartum. making heirs. he fucking hates that word. heirs.
toshiro. it’s a good name.
he’d leave his dad if he were his mother, too. he did leave his dad.
mr. dugu asked after hiring him if he was a soldier, going by his posture. he’s no earthbender, and the scars are from trial and error lightning bolts. but there are nonbenders in the earth army, and lu ten can put his mouth where the money is when given a staff. so he says yes.
that must be why i like you so much, mr. dugu had sighed. my own boy is a little older than you and lives in ba sing se with his old lady, as a teacher in a little kid’s school. he’s a bender, so he enlisted to help fight- but that stubborn old prince bastard is persistent. you know the ash and blood is filthying their water? his old lady is pregnant, and she has no clean water to drink. it’s unbelievable! but that ashmaker doesn’t realize how steadfast the good people of the earth kingdom are. the spirits will deliver them, and he’ll tuck his tail between his legs and run for the hills.
filthy water also means sick livestock. and sick livestock means sick people when the livestock is eaten. sick people means sick mothers and children, and sick doctors that can’t help sick pregnant mothers give birth. and then ba sing se is cut off from incoming supplies due to his father’s army, so they’re probably rationing the medicine. so sick pregnant mothers giving birth without proper medicine, without proper doctors because they’re also all sick. that leads to dying mothers, dying newborns, or mothers and newborns dying together.
lu ten just isn’t sure his father realizes little stuff like that. or maybe he does, and just doesn’t care. and that thought makes him so angry, he doesn’t even know what to do with himself.
his father had acted like all that was happening in the impenetrable city was something funny in his letters. along with a couple of thinly veiled pleads for lu ten to quit being stubborn and join him already.
narrow, ignorant self-interest does not impress him. its ugly coming from his own father. its even uglier on a man that’s supposed to lead their fucking country one day. lu ten will not be the same. the people he loves most in this world cannot afford for him to be the same.
you have a savvy for diplomacy, zhao had snapped at him. your father could use something like that. what’s keeping you here? don’t you see benefits waiting to be reaped from this? your cousins will still be here when your father succeeds! get over yourself!
“diplomacy,” lu ten sneers out loud. then sighs loudly in frustration when he knocks the cup over with a jerky hand.
one minute ba sing se is being taken by his dad so it can become one with the fire nation. the next minute he’s burning it to the ground. if it’s the fire nation, why in the all fuck is he ruining it? is that not counter-productive? is that not hypocrisy? what diplomacy is there to be had when there’s nothing left of the city?
but then, people on the homeland get arrested for some real petty shit. the colonial towns get paid dust. his dad killed the last dragon, despite a good portion of lu tens childhood folktales composing of dragons. despite agni herself being depicted as a dragon. a million things that he never questioned before that make no sense to him now that he has the freedom and time to truly ponder.
the spirits are not to be trifled with or questioned, my son. the spirits can even judge the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
lu ten isn’t a man who claims to know the spirits ways, nor does he question them. he wasn’t there when they laid foundation to the earth. he doesn’t know who determined its measurements. but he does know that agni wouldn’t deliver a message so stupid and pointless.
he just questions his father, and the authenticity of his pointless quest to flatten a city being spirit-sent.
what do you wanna bet he used the wrong kind of flower for his tea and was just tripping balls?
the more he thinks about it the less grace his train of thought is willing to spare.
he’s so mad that he can’t like his dad. he’s so mad that he exists at the cost of his mother’s everything. he’s so mad that everything his proud, beautiful country stands on and believes in has the strength of a single grain of rice. he can’t bare the thought of just continuing to ignore it to maintain his sanity- he’s never been so glad to be an adult with a brain and not a kid in his own little world- but realizing things is so painful. its only ever painful. he wants to curl up in a ball and rot away. the guilt and anger is mind numbing.
do you think of me with as much frustration as i think of you, dad? do you sit and ruin your own day trying to understand what goes on in my head, or is it just me?
the fumes from the boiling teapot steam his face as he bends over it slowly, trying to curb the acid crawling up his throat like a demon emerging from hell. static curls up and down his arms and brings his hair straight up, the heat bleeding from the tips of his fingers and his palms into the counter is teetering on the edge of unbearable-
“cousin?” a little voice startles him out of his thoughts.
he pauses, and turns his head.
zuko’s standing there in front of mr. dugu, who’s grinning at him cheekily.
zuko is wearing a green apron that drags on the floor. the anger building in his chest melts like chocolate over a fire. the counter is already cooling beneath his steel grip.
“…li,” he greets, weak humor in his voice. “what’s shaking?”
the kid flushes. “i got bored and walked here from mom’s work. and mr. dugu said no loitering in his store. so i’m….. hired.”
“are you a seasonal employee?” lu ten snorts.
“i don’t even know what that means,” zuko replies curtly. he doesn’t realize his sass definitely matches azula’s. “i can bring the tea to the customers.”
“well,” lu ten sighs, “i believe i’ve scalded the hell out of this jasmine by accident. give me a few minutes and i’ll happily provide you with something drinkable.”
“…do better!” his baby cousin orders awkwardly. and so he does, because lu ten is only ever the loyal servant to his baby cousins.
zuko brings the tea to the customers. every time lu ten hears his lispy little voice thank them for their patronage in monotone, he can’t help the way his lips quirk in amusement.
“the girls in the front kept baby-talking me,” his little cousin grumps later that day. “i had to run away before they got the chance to pinch my face.”
mr. dugu laughs, and pats zuko’s little shoulder heartily. lu ten’s heart aches. he can think he hates ignorance until the sheep-cows come home, but there’s nothing crueler than seeing his father in this man’s mannerisms, who’s son could be dead or alive at this very moment, due to his father in question.
“just be glad your sister wasn’t here to see it,” he replies, lest he choke himself up with his own angsting.
zuko huffs and slides off the chair he’d been sitting crosslegged on. “mr. dugu, could i take some cakes from the back to my sister? she’s a sweet tooth.”
“it’ll be coming out of your paycheck,” the man replies teasingly.
zuko frowns like a cranky owlcat. “i don’t know what that word means either.” and with that, he stomps to the back.
“that one’s a trip alright,” mr. dugu laughs. “and you say the younger one is even worse?”
“sure is,” lu ten sighs happily. “they both are the worst. i’m wrapped around their greedy little fingers. they don’t let me hold the house keys, but they’ll let me buy them candy.”
“it’ll be like that forever,” mr. dugu says sagely. “my only son is now a grown man with a wife of his own, and soon, he’ll make me a grandfather. but at the end of the day, he’s always gonna be my precious boy. my baby. and no matter what, i want him to always know he can come back home to me. despite everything. no matter what.”
the man deflates suddenly. “if anything, i might just beg him to come back home to me, once ba sing se chases that scumbag away. i have enough room to house the three of them. my boy lives and breathes to be a teacher in the city, but this old heart can’t take not knowing….”
he trails off, and pushes over a rock with his foot glumly. “they say he has children, too. the fire nation prince attacking the city, i mean.”
lu ten’s blood turns to ice in an instant.
“i doubt one such as he would feel anything if he lost them. if a man can kill another man’s child, i believe he’d might as well kill his very own. and this father would protect every child in this village as his own. you, and your little monster cousins. you know?”
agni is a big blurry dot in his vision, and he swallows hard. “yeah. yeah, i do. this one thanks you for it.”
he holds zuko’s little hand tighter than usual as they go to pick ursa and azula up from the florist.
#this took me ALL DAY to finish. ALL DAY#and idk if its even good or not but we move.#i hope you guys can forgive me sneaking a jiro mention in. i love my ocs#IROHS POV COMING UP NEXT WHOS READY TO RUMBLEEEE#runaway fire fam au#alicias writing stuff
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Inspired by this funny post about exactly what Knives would have done with multiple Plant babies had his plan succeeded. Warning: this fic is considerably less funny.
After everything, Wolfwood finds himself defaulted to child-minder.
This wildly amuses Zazie—who pops in and out of Eden with their swarm—and pleases Legato, who seems to think Wolfwood's bought the company line after seeing "the glory of Master Knives' power." He doesn't know if the news has gotten back to the Eye of Michael, whether the lucky few laugh behind their hands at the thought of the Punisher essentially being a babysitter, but Wolfwood doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks.
Less blood on his hands, he'd mused one night. You've always wanted me to stop killing, tongari; it only took... His tongue then crept into his throat, and he trained himself to never think of it again.
There's no denying that Knives isn't exactly happy about a human being around the "chosen," but there's no denying he didn't plan anything long-term for multiple Plant children, and Wolfwood—the faithful, compliant Punisher who made the miracle possible with his betrayal—can be entrusted, or at the very least, bent to his will. After all, his contract with the Eye may be over, but he doesn't trust Knives to trot out the old threat about the orphanage.
And when it comes down to it, the kids are better off with as little interaction with Knives—and Conrad and Elendira and Legato and the Eye—as much as possible. Maybe, Wolfwood thinks, he can spare at least one life if they’re around him enough, that they learn that all humans aren't monsters.
Despite the circumstances of their birth, he knows Vash, if he were here, would have treated them kindly, and really, it isn’t in Wolfwood to act otherwise; some kids back in Hopeland had similar terrible beginnings, and God knows it wasn't their fault.
But he takes one day at a time, playing tag in green grassy fields that are almost a pleasure to fall on, cajoling them to eat another bite of the terrible nutritious slop Conrad cooks up for them, retelling the same bedtime tales Miss Melanie used to recite to the younger ones. Even when they howl like kestrels (with Castor slicing up several packs of cigarettes), when Elendira waltzes in to pinch and prod and taunt (Orion can’t speak for days afterwards and Capella still won’t go near any humans besides Wolfwood), when he’s so tired that he can’t slip his shoes on (sometimes he barely manages to button his shirt), Wolfwood makes it work.
Add the fact that half of the Plant bunch didn't seem to have powers, and while that didn't guarantee them a short life being poked and prodded in Conrad's lab—Wolfwood had heard a hissed exchange, something about a Tesla—Knives seems more detached from them all the same, despite his initial proclamation of "Look at Vash. We thought the same of him. Leave them be, and they might turn out useful."
It had taken all of Wolfwood's strength that day not to punch him.
He tries not to think beyond that.
The kids are growing fast, though. He fears what will happen when Knives takes an active interest in them, but does the best he can, teaching letters and numbers and colors and bits of Earth history. They all resemble Knives—light-colored hair and marble-blue eyes—yet already have a startling variety of personalities. Izar, for instance, is sharp-tempered and prone to bursts of throwing the nearest objects at walls; Ursa and Adhara cling together all the time, but Regulus and Vega prefer to be on opposite sides of the room; Perseus is an utter clown, making his siblings burst into giggles every chance he gets; and Aster... out of everyone, Aster is most like Vash: protective, kind, and tender in a world that, especially now, takes advantage of stomping anything sweet out.
One day, Wolfwood’s perched underneath a tree, watching the kids play another round of hide-and-seek and occasionally glancing down at Pollux as he devours another anthology about flowers, when Aster plops right into his lap.
He smiles. “Don’t feel like joining them, Aster?”
“No,” Aster says, and yawns widely, showing off his baby teeth.
“What’s up, kiddo? Didn’t sleep last night?”
“Sort of...” Aster looks up at him, seeming to hesitate before saying, “Do you dream, Nico?”
Nico still reminds him of Livio, but Wolfwood never has the heart to correct them. “Sometimes,” he says, hoping Aster doesn’t ask of what. “Did you have one?”
Aster wrinkles his nose. “It was different than the others.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Like...” Aster prods his cheek with his tongue, thinking. “Castor said it was stupid.”
“Let me be the judge of that. What was it?” He hopes it’s not another nightmare about bugs; Zazie showing off the worms to the kids always gives at least one of them the creeps. Aquila still can’t look at an earthworm without bursting into tears.
“I thought I saw... I saw our Father,” Aster says, “but he was different. He had these strange clothes on, with... glasses on his face? Like yours, but they were orange. And round."
Wolfwood’s heart jolts in his chest. It takes all of his control not to leap up, to keep his smile steady, to ask calmly, “And?”
“I felt... safe. Like I do around you. He was in a room like this, but with these bundles of red flowers. Geraniums, like Pollux told us about the other day.” Aster tilts his head, watching Ursa and Regulus tackle each other, shrieking with laughter, as Castor complains that no one’s paying attention to the game at all. Aster shakes his head apologetically when Capella tries to wave him over. “And this word came to me, too, in the breeze. Vash?”
Wolfwood lets out a shaky breath.
“He’s the other angel, isn’t he?” Aster asks. “The one on the windows and paintings and everything.”
Wolfwood’s throat tightens. “Yeah,” he manages.
“Our Creator,” Aster continues, plucked from the familiar spiel Knives gives them on days where he feels like the kids aren’t appreciative enough. “But he seemed sad. Why would he be, if he’s in Paradise?”
“Who told you that?” Wolfwood asks, a bit too sharply.
Wolfwood swallows and looks up, trying not to show any emotion. “I... I don’t know if I can answer that question.”
"I thought you knew him?”
Aster flinches a little, but answers, “Zazie.”
Wolfwood inwardly curses. He’s going to beat their ass. What the hell possessed Zazie to do such a thing? “I did. But it was a long time ago.”
“Can you tell me about him?”
“I...” Wolfwood trails off. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to, but more than that, how can he? I loved your father, and I betrayed him. He wasn’t like the Knives you all hero-worship, distant and cool and powerful. He was... he would have...
He remembers the vines swallowing up Julai. The screams that lasted for days, weeks, afterwards, along with the sucking bursts of breath and blood. The strangely beautiful purple blooms, their scent that still lingers in the walls. The endless litany of a piano playing that same damn song, over and over.
The howl that burst from his lips when he saw Vash, encased in stone, lips rounded in a silent scream.
“Nico?”
He stares into Aster’s earnest face, glad that his sunglasses are hiding the moisture building underneath his eyelids. He has kind eyes. “Yeah?”
“I think he wanted to talk to me, but couldn’t. But you can, Nico. Right?”
“Have you told Kn—your Father about this?”
“No. Should I?”
Wolfwood shakes his head. “I don’t know if that’s necessary, Aster.” He doesn’t know how Knives will react, and refuses to think of more than Vash is dead. You’ve known this for years. He doesn’t dare. Hasn’t even looked in the room where Vash is as good as a statue, arms stretched by the same knives that rise from his shoulderblades like wings.
But he looks at Aster. Vash’s son. Doesn’t he deserve to know him? Doesn’t Vash deserve more than to be a story?
"I called your father tongari," he begins, closing his eyes, "because of his hair. It stuck up in spikes, like this—" he gently arranges Aster’s into pointed tufts. "He was blonde, like you, but a shade darker than your hair. And he had eyes like yours, as blue as the desert sky. His favorite treat in the whole world was freshly-baked doughnuts, sprinkled with crystals of sugar, and when he laughed, it was like the sun coming out. He was a quick shot, too, but could never hurt anyone..."
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Fingers crossed, everyone. The wife & I are both applying for the Magic Grant Program that would, effectively, pay for the both of us to be able to go to MagicCon Philadelphia.
And if I don't get it?
We keep pumping up the content & try again in May!
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North To The Future [Chapter 8: Crash And Burn]
The year is 1999. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.
Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, discussions of sex, actual sex (18+ readers only), near-death experiences, health crises, hospitals, questionable tattoos, trout with Trent.
Word count: 6.7k.
Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.
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“He broke up with me.” Kimmie hasn’t taken a single sip of her Miller Lite. She’s staring right past you and Heather, her eyes glassy puddles shimmering with reflections of multicolored Christmas lights. It’s Monday, December 13th, and Dale’s stereo is playing Queen’s Thank God It’s Christmas. You’re in the usual booth and waiting for the boys to get off work. Outside the frosted windows is an ocean of darkness punctuated by narrow aisles of murky streetlight luminescence. “He actually broke up with me.”
Heather snaps her fingers in front of Kimmie’s face. “Uh, Kimmie, Earth to Kimmie, yeah, can you give us a little more exposition, please? When exactly did this happen?”
“Yesterday,” Kimmie says, slightly more present now. “He’d been weird since the hike, super depressed, super boring…he wasn’t even interested in doggie style, and he loves doggie style!”
“Boundaries, Kimmie,” Heather pleads.
“So he called me to come over last night and I went to see him and he was…like…sitting on his couch with his hands folded in his lap like it was a freaking job interview. And he explained that he thought I was totally great and that we’d had a lot of fun together but now he had to break things off for personal reasons.”
“Wow, personal reasons, wow,” Heather muses. She doesn’t turn to look at you, but she does kick your boot under the table. You pretend not to notice.
“Wow,” Joyce echoes wryly, flipping a page in her current fantasy novel. There’s some stately prince on the front cover: crown, sword, shield, long flowing hair like a river of white gold.
“I don’t even care that much,” Kimmie realizes as she’s saying it. “I mean, it was nearing its expiration date anyway. I’m going to get back together with Brad, Aegon’s going to presumably resume sleeping his way through Juneau…or maybe try out taking a vow of celibacy, who knows, he’s been very monkish the past few days. He can be fun sometimes, and I like him, and I wish him all the best, but there’s no future for us. I just realized that he’s the first guy who ever broke up with me instead of the other way around. It feels…not great!”
“Congratulations, you’re a mortal,” Joyce says, not looking up from her book.
“So you wouldn’t care if Aegon got with someone else?” Heather asks Kimmie innocently. This time, you kick Heather. She winces but bites back a hiss of pain.
Kimmie considers this, finally taking a swig of her I’m-a-cool-girl-who-likes-hockey-and-trucks beer. “No, probably not.”
I won’t do it, you vow to yourself with false stoicism, imagined iron you wish you were really made of. I won’t date him, I won’t sleep with him, I won’t fall in love with him. And yet part of you already knows it’s too late. Part of you knows this as if it’s been inked to your skin like the scrawled, secret entries of a journal.
Ursa Minor’s front door bangs open, and what you see when you turn to look doesn’t make any sense. Rob and Trent—both dripping wet, their hair plastered flat to their heads, their boots squeaking on the hardwood floor—rush inside. There are shouts and gasps and people leaping up out of their seats to get a better look. Trent is carrying something over one of his lumberjack-broad shoulders. He kneels to throw it down onto the floor. It’s Aegon: limp, bluish, unconscious.
“Someone call somebody!” Trent bellows. He’s staring down at Aegon in panic, in terror, not knowing what to do. Beads of water run down his face. “An ambulance or 911 or a helicopter…or…or somebody!”
“Got it!” Dale says, darting for the phone behind the bar. Kimmie is shrieking. Joyce is trying to calm her down. And by then, you’re on the floor beside Aegon feeling for a pulse on his carotid. He doesn’t have one. He’s cold and he’s silent and he’s medically dead.
“He fell,” Trent says franticly, helplessly. “We were bringing the boat into the harbor and he got tangled in a net and fell overboard. I pulled him out, but he was underwater for a while and we couldn’t…we couldn’t wake him up…”
“Aegon?!” you scream, shaking him, slapping him across his icy, vacant face. “Aegon, wake up, wake up, please wake up!”
Heather is next to you. “What can I do?”
“Help me get his wet clothes off. Hypothermia.”
She yanks at his boots, his socks, his jeans. “You know how to do CPR, right?”
“Yeah, on a dog!” Still, you have to try. How long can he go without a pulse until he’s braindead? Four minutes? Five? The cold might buy him extra time, but not much. Minutes. You rip off his red flannel shirt; buttons go careening across the wet floor. As you place your palms over his heart, you notice—fleetingly, dazedly, like sloshing through a dream—that he has a scattering of scars on his chest, gashes and punctures and knicks…and two tattoos. There is a dragon spiraled around his right collarbone. Just below his left, there are three words written in light, graceful cursive: I’m a killer.
You start chest compressions. How many am I supposed to do on a human? Ten? Twenty? You can’t remember. You’re sobbing; you aren’t sure when that started, but it’s in full force now. Heather mops the tears from your face with her sleeve so you can see.
He’s going to die, you think. He’s going to die lying on the floor of this bar in his boxers, and he will never tell me anything again, and he will never see his family again, and he will never get better. The channel killed Jesse and now it’s killed Aegon too.
“Is he dead?!” Kimmie yelps from across the room. “Please tell me he’s not dead!”
Heather hurls back: “You’re going to be dead if you don’t shut up! Let her work on him!”
You tilt Aegon’s head back, lift his chin, pinch his nose shut. Then you exhale into him. You can taste the dark ancient salt of the sea on his cold lips…but beneath that there is rum as well. He shouldn’t have been drinking that much at work. He doesn’t usually. What’s different? What’s been bothering him? But you think you know the answer to that.
There’s nothing, nothing, nothing…and then Aegon’s chest rises and he rolls onto his side, choking out torrents of seawater and gasping for air. People are cheering and chattering, but you barely hear them.
“Oh my god!” you cry out, and if you were sobbing before now you’re properly bawling, breathless and hysterical. It’s uncontrollable, you can’t seem to stop. You cling to Aegon as he shivers violently and peers around with half-open, profoundly confused blue eyes, warming him with your own body heat, turning his flesh from blue to white to pink.
“Go get coats and stuff to warm him up,” Heather says to Trent, shoving him away. And you do actually need coats…but also, you think, Heather is trying to get rid of her brother. Because it should be obvious to anyone what’s going on here; it should be obvious to anyone that you’re in love with this white-blond man on the floor who not so very long ago was a stranger.
“Hey, hey,” Aegon rasps, pawing clumsily at your face as if to comfort you, almost poking your eyes out in the process. And then he asks, with genuine confusion: “What the hell are you crying about?”
You start laughing, tears still streaming down your cheeks. “You, idiot. I’m crying about you.”
“I’m fine, Appletini,” he croaks. “Shh. Shh. Stop. No crying.”
“I thought you were dead, I thought…I thought…”
“I’m not that easy to kill,” Aegon says, his eyes dipping shut. Outside in the blackness somewhere, there are sirens whirling. Trent returns with an armful of coats and together you pile them on top of Aegon, burying him in a tomb of L.L.Bean and Patagonia and The North Face. “Trust me. I know.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Obviously, the hospital won’t let Aegon have rum and Cokes. He pushes his morphine button almost constantly, even though the doctors and nurses tell him he’s already maxed out. They began by keeping Aegon overnight for observation, and then he developed pneumonia, and then the first type of antibiotics didn’t work and they had to play roulette until they found one that did. Now it’s a full week later—December 20th—and Aegon is finally feeling like himself again and is due to be released tomorrow. Sunfyre has been staying with you and your parents. He loves it, he gets constant attention and enjoys gazing out the window to see if his new best friend the cow moose will show up. Meanwhile, Trent has convinced his boss Rusty—another high school classmate of your parents, another hulking bearded specimen of the enmeshed Juneau ecosystem—to let Aegon keep his job despite the extended leave; Trent even managed to get Aegon paid time off for the first five days. This is all rather heroic of him. It makes you feel bad for thinking he might be a serial killer. If Trent knows that Aegon was drunk on the job, he hasn’t mentioned it to anybody.
“I got you something,” Aegon tells you when you get off work. It’s just after sunset, the last whisps of pink and lilac dusk vanishing from the sky. Things have been slow at the vet clinic as Christmas draws near, which is good in that you can leave early and visit Aegon more often. It’s bad because you’re less busy, less preoccupied; you have all the time in the world to think about him. Aegon is propped up in bed on pillows—his hair slicked back from his face, his eyes sleepy and racoonish—and wearing a hospital gown that’s too big for him. You can see his collarbones and his tattoos, though you’re trying very hard not to stare, to wonder. He points to the table beside his bed. There’s a bouquet of blue roses lying there.
“For me?!”
“For the person who literally brought me back from the dead? Yeah, I don’t think it’s too extravagant.”
You give him one of the hot chocolates you bought from the hospital cafeteria. It’s not as good as his, obviously, but it’s better than nothing. He clutches the Styrofoam cup with both hands, steam rolling up into his face. He inhales the scent, closes his eyes, sighs deeply with a smile. “I hope they aren’t stolen,” you say about the roses, only half-kidding.
“They’re from the gift shop. I dragged myself down there after lunch. They really weren’t that expensive, I think the cashier gave me a still-attached-to-an-IV discount.”
“Was she cute?”
“She was eighty years old.”
You laugh and sit down in the chair beside his bed, sipping your own hot chocolate: thin, watery, weak. You admire the roses, threading velvety cerulean petals through your fingers. “I love them, really, but I wish you wouldn’t buy things for me. I know you’re chronically short on money. And I am somehow skeptical that you have health insurance. Do you have health insurance?”
He grins toothily. “Nope.”
“Aegon,” you lament.
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll bill me, I’ll never pay, it’s all made up.”
“You might need a halfway decent credit score one day.”
He shakes his head. “I’m never going to try to get a mortgage. I’m never going to apply for a job at a bank or a law firm. I’ll be fine. I’ll live in a tree if that’s what it takes.”
You rest your palm against his cheek and then his forehead, checking for fever. His skin is warm but not hot, pale but not bloodless. You can feel his eyes on you, trying to catch your gaze like a hook through a fish. You avoid them.
“How do I look, vet lady?”
“I’m not really qualified to evaluate humans.”
“I don’t want to get better.”
Now you do stare at him, direct and mystified. “Why?”
“I’m worried you won’t be nice to me anymore.”
You chuckle, relieved. “I’ll still be nice to you, Aegon.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
A nurse pops into the room, young and springy and jovial like a kitten. She must be new; you don’t recognize her, and you’ve been here a lot. “Good afternoon, I’m just swinging by to take your vitals. I see you’re scheduled to go home tomorrow, how exciting!” The nurse squints down at the chart she has pinned to a clipboard. “Aegon…?”
He smirks long-sufferingly. “It’s Greek.”
“It’s lovely!” the nurse recovers. She measures his temperature and heartrate and blood pressure, his reflexes and his oxygenation. He passes all inquiries with flying colors. She congratulates Aegon on his recovery and flits off to tend to more needy patients. You think of the nights you’ve spent curled up in this chair, listening to Aegon’s labored, rattling breathing and watching blooms of flare-hot crimson fever creep across his face. You think of how much it’s going to kill you to lose him someday. You find yourself staring at his tattoos, ink that someone else put there in some other city, remnants of the life he had before.
“You can ask,” Aegon says. “I’m sure you’re wondering.”
You set your hot chocolate on the table and move closer to him, ghosting your fingertips over the words: I’m a killer. He jolts a little, although not in a bad way, not in an unwelcome way. He doesn’t lean away from you. In fact, he leans in. “What’s up with that?”
“Would this be an awkward moment for me to confess that I’m the Ice Fisher?”
You smile. “You have to admit that it’s a little weird. There’s a killer on the loose, you have a tattoo that says you’re a killer, I think any reasonable observer would have questions.”
“Kimmie didn’t.”
“Reasonable observer, I said. Reasonable.”
“It’s not a confession. It’s a Johnny Cash lyric.”
“Really? Which song?” You know a fair amount of Johnny Cash thanks to your dad’s extensive vinyl collection. You skim through his discography in your head: Walk The Line, Ring Of Fire, Get Rhythm, Folsom Prison Blues, I Got Stripes. You can’t remember any of them having that line. It circles around in your skull, only sounding like Aegon’s voice: I’m a killer, I’m a killer.
“I’ve Been Everywhere,” he says. “It’s a cover, actually. Some other guy did it first. But I didn’t know that when I got inked. And I loved Johnny Cash’s version when I heard it. It was like my theme song.”
“Ohhh, right, that’s the one where he lists all the cities he’s been to, like Reno, uh, and Chicago, and, uhhh…”
Aegon sings, deep but hoarse: “Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota, Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma, Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma—” He breaks off with a coughing fit.
“Stop,” you beg, laughing. “Stop, you’re going to hurt yourself.” You trace the cursive letters lightly. I’m a killer. I’m a killer. “Kimmie never had questions about that?”
“I don’t think Kimmie really sees me. She just sees adjectives in the shape of my silhouette. But you…” He puts his hand over yours, pinning it to his chest. You can feel his heart under there somewhere, beneath muscles and bones and a pitch-black sea crawling with monsters that have evolved to live in the extreme gravity, in the depths: ghosts of the past and sirens of the future. He smiles. “You see a lot.”
“20/20, baby.” You study his scars. They’re random like a scatterplot, none large enough to appear life-threatening. “How did you get these?”
“Car accident. A long time ago.”
“Before you left Miami?”
He gazes absently out the window, where snow is falling. You can see it drifting down to the earth in the gloomy beams of streetlights. “Yeah.”
Now there are new lyrics bubbling up in your mind, not anything by Johnny Cash but Cake’s The Distance. No trophy, no flowers, no flashbulbs, no wine, he’s haunted by something he cannot define. And perhaps you know something about what that feels like. “Do you really think I’m a coward?” you ask softly. “I know you’re trying not to lie to me. So I’m hoping you’ll tell me the truth. You might be the only person who will.”
Aegon pauses before he answers. “I think a lot of people are cowards in one way or another,” he says diplomatically. “And I think that if that’s your greatest flaw as a human—that you don’t want to disappoint your parents, that you don’t want to hurt them, that you want to repay them for being so wonderful when there are people out there who beat and murder their kids—you turned out alright.”
You think of how easy it would be to rest your head on his bare, scarred chest and let him hold you. You think of how much you want that, want it in a sudden and ravenous and unbearable sort of way. “Thank you,” you whisper.
“No problem, Appletini.”
There is a knock on the door, and you jerk away from Aegon. You pick up your hot chocolate and slurp it as you sink into the chair. Aegon laces his hands together and wrings them. Trent walks in. “Sup, bro?!” he pipes cheerfully.
“Bro,” Aegon offers in return. They bump fists.
“You look like you’re feeling better.”
“I definitely am.”
“Still getting let out tomorrow?”
“Yup. Like a prisoner who made parole. Kimmie already offered to drive me home.” Then he adds: “Platonically.” Kimmie’s the only one in the friend group without a real job. Her parents are both university professors—you aren’t sure how none of the genius chromosomes made their way down the genetic Plinko board to her, but they didn’t—and she gets paid to be their ‘research assistant’…which means she works rarely and with no accountability whatsoever.
Trent’s eyes dart to you, to the blue roses, to you again, finally back to Aegon. He’s beaming, but there’s something hollow about it, like if you struck him across the face it would crack like porcelain. “Flowers, huh? That’s dope.”
“Yeah, I figured it was the least I could do since she saved my life and all.”
“She’s fantastic,” Trent agrees proudly, like he owns you. “In fact, that’s kind of why I’m here.” He turns to you. “I called the house and your parents told me I should check the hospital. I wanted to…you know, now that Aegon’s basically better and we all know he’s not gonna die…I wanted to take you to dinner tomorrow.”
“Dinner?” you repeat, stupidly, like you’re unfamiliar with the concept. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, someplace nice. Candlelight and fancy dessert, the whole deal.”
A date. That’s definitely a date. You stare at Trent. He stares at you. Aegon frowns at you both, pressing his knuckles to his lips. “Dinner,” you say awkwardly, but with more conviction. “Totally. Dinner would be nice.”
“Awesome!” Trent thunders. “I’ll pick you up at 8?”
“Sounds good!” you say with overcompensating enthusiasm. Trent swoops in for an unexpected hug—nearly spilling your hot chocolate—and gives Aegon a parting fist bump. Then he’s gone.
“I owe him,” you explain to Aegon, speaking quickly, nervously. “He saved your life, he fished you out of the channel like a goddamn salmon. He’s responsible for you keeping your job. He’s getting you paid time off. He’s been around the hospital a lot this week, he’s been so helpful, selflessly helpful…I can’t just tell him to fuck off after all that.” And then you say: “But it’s only dinner! Only one dinner!”
“Need some condoms?” Aegon teases, trying to make you smile. It works. “I have a box I’m not currently using.”
“I’m on the pill.”
“Good to know.”
“I doubt your condoms are horse-sized anyway.”
“Hey hey hey, it’s not about the number of inches, it’s about how you use them.”
“I’ve heard some very interesting things. About your inches, I mean.”
“Oh no,” he groans, covering his blushing face with his hands.
“I didn’t say bad things. I said interesting things.”
“I wouldn’t mind you knowing from firsthand experience,” he says with a sly little grin you can’t quite read. It’s playful, it’s sharp, it’s baiting, it’s sad.
“About what?”
“About my inches.”
You both burst out laughing, so hard Aegon launches into another coughing fit. You reach for him instinctively, pressing your hand to his chest again as if you can cure him, not a palm reader but a faith healer. A miracle worker. A professional fixer.
“You think it’s safe?” he asks, seriously now. “Dinner, I mean. With Trent.”
“I think he’d have a hard time strangling me in the middle of a crowded restaurant. And everyone’s going to know we’re hanging out together tomorrow night, he’d have to be more than stupid to kill me. He’d have to be all brainstem, like an alligator or a shark. Besides, he doesn’t want me dead.”
“I know. He wants you to be his wife.” There’s nothing to fill the uneasy lull but the pounding of your own heartbeat. “Call me,” Aegon says abruptly. “When you get home tomorrow night. So I know you’re okay.” So I know you didn’t get murdered. So I know you’re not at the bottom of a lake somewhere.
“What if it’s not until really late? I don’t want to disturb you while you’re recovering.”
He looks out the window: into the frigid void, into nothing. “Still call me.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Trent takes you to the Red Dog Saloon, Juneau’s idea of fine dining. You intentionally dress to look not-sexy: dark blue flannel (you’ve warmed to the fabric since Aegon wears it so much) with a T-shirt underneath, jeans, boots, minimal makeup, hair in an I-really-don’t-care messy loose braid. Trent doesn’t seem to notice that this isn’t supposed to be a date. He’s wearing a button-up maroon shirt and khakis. He chats away blithely as you survey the menu. He’s had the servers bring out candles to put on the table. He’s ordered craft beers for you both. You wrinkle your nose and shudder after each thick bitter sip, chasing the beer with desperate gulps of water. Whoever owns the Red Dog Saloon does not share Dale’s devotion to Shania Twain and Christmas music; the stereo is playing Savage Garden’s Crash And Burn.
“Ready to order?” the waitress asks, casting former-football-star Trent a flirtatious smile just in case he’s single. He is! you mentally shout, hoping for telepathy. He just doesn’t know it!
“Yeah,” you begin. “I think I’d like to try your brisket—”
“Oh no, no no no,” Trent says with a chuckle. He flips his hair; in your head, you hear a neigh. “They have a great special. Trout with risotto. How fancy is that?! I don’t even know what risotto is! We gotta try that. We gotta make tonight special.”
“Okay. Yeah. Sure.” You give the waitress a tight smirk as you hand her the menu. “The trout special. Two of them, I guess.”
“You’ll love it,” the waitress promises, tossing Trent another smile like a penny into a fountain. She takes both menus and disappears into the kitchen.
“So,” Trent says, drinking his beer. “I didn’t know you liked Aegon so much. I thought you kind of hated him, actually.”
You shrug, peering into the foam of your unwanted beer. “I don’t like to see anyone suffering. It doesn’t matter who.”
“That makes sense, I guess.”
“And you encouraged me to get along with him because you want him to stay in Juneau so he can be in your band.”
“Oh yeah, right. Okay, never mind. I was just…curious.” Another hair flip.
“Look, Trent…” You gather your courage like raking up autumn leaves. “We’re friends, right?”
He chortles. “Well, I’d like to think we’re a lot more than that.”
I bet you would. “But we never…like…we never put a label on it, you know?”
“Do you need a label?” he says. You had worried he might be mad; instead, he’s amused. You aren’t sure why that makes you feel worse. “Is that what makes it official, us using the words boyfriend, girlfriend, relationship, whatever?”
“Maybe those words don’t really apply to us, and that’s why we haven’t used them yet,” you try hopefully. “Like, if we were supposed to date, it would feel more natural for us to date. But maybe it doesn’t feel so natural, so we’re better off staying friends.”
Now he puts his beer down and stares at you. The glass thumps against the glossy wood. He’s bending towards you, though you don’t think he’s even aware of it; he props his elbows on the table, his brow crinkling in bewilderment. And there’s something else in the lines of his face too. Anger. Indignation. Betrayal. “You want to be friends?”
“I didn’t say that,” you amend swiftly. “I just said maybe we’re better off as friends.”
He slaps his palm against the table—you flinch, hating that he has that power over you—and laughs in amazement. “I’m just…well, I’m shocked! You’re fine with kissing me, and watching movies in your bedroom, and hanging out all the time, and getting drinks together and playing pool and showing me off to your parents, but you’re horrified by the thought of calling it dating?! You’re too much, ladybug. You’re really too much.”
He's going to pretend he doesn’t see that I want out. And he’s going to keep pretending until he’s on his knees with a fucking ring from Zales. “I don’t think I’m looking for a relationship right now, Trent. With anyone.” Oh, and that’s such a goddamn lie.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
He studies you; but that’s too kind a word for it. His eyes flay you down to the bone. “I’m a good guy, you know.”
“I know,” you lie, nodding agreeably.
“You’re not eighteen anymore,” he says. “It’s not like you have forever to find someone to settle down with. I go to work, I’m popular, I’m presentable, I care about you, I take you on dates, I move your furniture around whenever you fucking ask me to, I’m a good guy. I get that maybe this is progressing a little fast for you, and we can slow down if that’s what you want. But I think it would be pretty stupid to give something like this up. Don’t you?”
It doesn’t sound like a question. It sounds like a threat. Don’t you? Don’t you? “You’re right, Trent,” you hear yourself say, like it’s someone else’s voice. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
The waitress arrives with your dinner and—not so subtly—slips Trent her number. He makes a great show of ripping it up in front of you. The trout and risotto thing is great, actually. It’s not what you walked in wanting, but it turned out just fine. And maybe that’s what the rest of your life will be like too: other people making choices, you hoping you’ll like the taste.
After dinner and dessert—a Baked Alaska, another of Trent’s suggestions that are more like nonnegotiables—he drives you home in his massive rumbling truck. You talk innocuously about your vet clinic clients, dogs and cats and hamsters and reindeer, until you roll to a stop in front of your parents’ house. You begin your goodbye, opening the truck door. Cold December air floods in.
“Okay Trent, thank you for a lovely night—” He cuts you off with a kiss he didn’t ask for, a hand on your face that feels hot and smothering. You’re so stunned it takes you a few seconds to try to push him away. He ignores you until you shove him so hard he can’t pretend not to notice.
“What are you so worried about?” he demands, he implores, like he’ll fix anything if you just name it, like he’ll strike the nails with his bare hands. But he can’t fix what’s wrong. What’s wrong is that I’m in love with Aegon Targaryen. “Are you scared I’ll be bored of you once you give it all up? Are you worried about getting pregnant? Aren’t you on the pill? I saw the pack in your bedroom.”
You’re nauseated that he noticed, that he’s imagined you like that: naked, compliant, vulnerable. “Yes, Trent, but that’s for me, not for you.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
You tell him the truth. Not the whole truth—not enough to enrage him—but the crux of it: the spine, the heart. “I always thought I knew exactly what my life was going to look like, but now I’m…I’m…”
“Well this is what comes next, right?” Trent says. “You check the boxes for school and work, and then it’s time to settle down. Get married, buy a house, have kids. I’m ready to give you that. I want to give you that. Don’t you want it too?”
Aegon is going to leave, you think with steel-cold dread. Sooner or later, he’ll disappear to start over again in some anonymous new city. And what will my life look like then? What will I have when he’s gone? “I guess I just need some more time to figure things out.”
Trent nods, his jaw clenched tight, looking out into the darkness through his windshield. “I’m not criticizing you for waiting. I’m just wondering what the hell you’re waiting for.”
Inside the house is hushed and empty; your parents are enjoying a night out with your dad’s bowling league. They even took Sunfyre with them. You drag yourself upstairs, each step a mile. You brush your teeth—twice—to get the taste of Trent and craft beer out of your mouth. And then you stand in your bedroom surrounded by posters and magazines, surrounded by fantasies that you will never wrap your hands around. You glance at the box full of Jesse’s journals; you can see the cardboard edge of it poking out from beneath your bed. He’s gone, and he wasn’t perfect, in fact in many ways he was a curse, was a plague, was a monster. But I think my mom would give anything for one more day with him. After all these years, I still think she would.
The blue roses Aegon gave you are in a vase on your nightstand, right next to the phone. They’re already dying. And now your throat is burning, and your eyes are wet with tears, and when defenseless sobs rip from your chest there is no one here to hear them. I don’t want to protect myself from what it would have been like with him. I want to know.
You snatch up the phone, find the Post-it note with Aegon’s number written on it, call him before you have time to change your mind. When he answers, it’s clear you woke him up. His voice is slow and groggy. “Hello?”
“Can I come over?”
“Huh…?”
“Can I please come over? I need to come over. I need to come over right now.”
Now he’s awake. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m at home, I’m fine, I’m safe, I just…I just…” You swipe the tears from your eyes and take a long, trembling breath. “I just need to come over.”
“No problem,” Aegon says. He is puzzled, he is concerned…but you think a part of him is glad too. “I’ll see you in ten minutes.”
You drive your Jeep to his apartment building and park it—badly, crookedly, like he would—under a streetlight. The night is fiercely, brutally cold when you dive out into it. The full moon is an island; the indigo, star-flecked sky is an ocean deep with secrets and bones and wreckage, splinters of swallowed lives dissolving into the blue. Upstairs, Aegon’s door is already unlocked. He’s wearing a black Nirvana T-shirt and green flannel pajama pants, his hair disheveled. He’s also making hot chocolate.
“Hi,” he says casually, filling the mugs. He adds splashes of French vanilla coffee creamer—plus some 99 Whipped for his green mug—and swirls of whipped cream, then shaves on a generous dusting of Hershey’s chocolate. He gives you the blue mug. You take it in quivering hands. “You alright?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m amazing.”
“Okay.” He waits, patient and watchful, sipping his hot chocolate.
You feel better after a few minutes tick by. Aegon’s apartment is serene and still. The tv is dark; there’s no music, no voices, no distractions. You can barely hear the screech of the Arctic wind outside. The only light turned on is the one in the kitchen; the rest of the apartment is shadows. The hot chocolate is warm, rich, comforting, safe. “How are you feeling?”
“Pretty great,” Aegon replies. “Normal.”
“Good.”
“Yeah.” He gazes at you, still waiting.
You finish your hot chocolate and put the mug in the kitchen sink. You take your hair out of your braid and shake it loose, surveying his apartment with aimless steps: his couch, his guitar, his litany of refrigerator magnets, his unmade bed. Aegon sets his mug down on the counter and crosses his arms over his chest.
“Appletini,” he says. “Why are you here?”
You turn back to him, but you can’t find your words. It’s on your face, it has to be; it’s in a language Aegon can speak fluently. You see the understanding flicker in his eyes like firelight: sudden, bright, exhilarated.
“Say it,” he prompts. “You have to say it, or I’m not going to believe you.”
You try, you really do try. But you can’t get the words to leave your lips. You don’t know how to put what you want from him into words at all. Anything, everything.
He smiles, softly like a whisper. “Me first, huh?” Then he begins undressing. He yanks his Nirvana T-shirt over his head—further tangling his hair—and tosses it across the room. He slips off his pajama pants, and then his boxers too. He’s standing there in the florescent kitchen light, flesh and ink and track marks and scars. “Okay, your turn. If you’re still interested.”
“I want you to do that part.”
He crosses the scuffed hardwood floor, his footsteps quiet. His fingers find the top button of your flannel shirt. His eyes are fixed on yours as he unhooks the first button, another, another after that. He leans in to press his lips to your throat, just beneath your jaw. Slowly, exquisitely slowly, he kisses his way down to your collarbone as he unfastens the rest of the buttons and gently pulls off your shirt, letting it fall to the floor. He slips his hands below the hem of the T-shirt you’re wearing underneath and lifts it away, his knuckles grazing your belly, your waist, your ribs, the lace of your bra. And then he cradles your face in his hands and kisses you with exceptional, reverent slowness, like you’re something that could shatter. You can’t reconcile this man with the sort of wild acrobatics that Kimmie had described. And then you’re not thinking about Kimmie at all. The past is a black hole, the future is an empty sky. There’s no room in this lightning-brief sliver of eternity for anyone else.
You breathe him in: sweetness, warmth, the bite of alcohol, fire and shadows and light. He unbuttons your jeans, unzips them, kneels down to peel them off of you. He touches his lips to your thigh—first the outside, then the downy-soft inside—and hesitates for a moment before he stands to kiss your lips again. His hands skim across your bare back towards the clasp of your bra, raising goosebumps like twilight stars. And then again, he hesitates. His hands come back to your face, his fingertips calloused but lithe.
“You’re nervous,” you murmur, smiling. You tuck his escaped lock of hair behind his ear, pressing yourself against him: hips, chest, soul. The sapphire blue lace of your bra and panties rustles across his skin. You can’t get close enough to him; it’s not possible, it’s not fathomable. He’s holding himself back, you can tell. He’s panting with the effort. In the midnight silence, you can hear every sound he makes with crystalline clarity. The moonlight pours in, painting you both in ghostly silver light.
Aegon chuckles shakily. “I am,” he admits.
“I think you’ve done this once or twice before.”
“Yeah, but not with you.”
“I want this,” you say, your lips to the curl of his ear. His skin is hot with eager, rushing blood. “And I want you to be the one to set me free.”
Something snaps in him, something breaks like a wave. Your bra tumbles to the floor, your panties are whisked away, you and Aegon are on the bed together tangled up like arteries flush with life. There is a breathless sort of desperation in it: in the way your fingers intertwine, in his gasps and your moans, in the sustained pleasure—so intense it borders on pain—that causes euphoric tears to spring up in your eyes, in his deep, startlingly powerful thrusts that begin slowly and then build to a furious rhythm. And you know then that he agrees, it’s not possible to ever get close enough to each other; but still, you resolve to try.
“Look at me, baby,” Aegon whispers as you arch into him and you beg him not to stop, his palm turning your face towards his. “Look at me, look at me, look at me…”
You unravel like thread torn from a spool until its empty, like a mystery, like stitches clipped from a healed wound. There’s an insurmountable sort of peace that follows it. Nothing is okay, and yet everything is, and you can conjure up no words but only colors: the white of snow, the indigo of the night sky, the gold of the rare unclouded midday sun, the ethereal green-violet glow of the Northern Lights. Aegon empties himself inside you, crying out and kissing the side of your face over and over again, tasting heat and salt and your unnamed love for him. You can feel the serenity settling over him as if it’s your own pulse slowing, your own mind cleared like the horizon after a storm. You are irredeemably etched into each other. You are two sides of the same coin: too weightless, too rooted, unable to leave, unable to stay.
As you lay side by side in the moonlight, your fingers tangled in his hair, Aegon says: “You are the only thing that’s ever made me want to stop running.”
“You could stay. I want you to stay.”
“For a while.” He pulls you against him. You rest your head on his chest: ink, scars, slow thudding heartbeat. His fingertips draw invisible paths up the length of your spine. “Not forever. But for a while.”
She’s hoping in time that her memories will fade.
“I don’t want to have to forget you,” you whisper, your voice breaking.
“Not yet,” Aegon vows. It’s the only promise he can make. He kisses your forehead, sweeping the tears from your cheeks with his hands. “Not yet.”
#aegon x you#aegon targaryen x reader#aegon ii targaryen#aegon targaryen#aegon ii#aegon x y/n#aegon targaryen x you#aegon targaryen ii#aegon targaryen ii x reader#aegon ii x you#aegon ii x reader
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20 Qᴜᴇꜱᴛɪᴏɴꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ꜰɪᴄ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇʀꜱ
Tagged by the lovely @snarky-magpie - thank you!!
1. How many works do you have on A03? 13 (for now...☺️)
2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 429,228
3. What fandoms do you write for? Voltron: Legendary Defender and Call of Duty: MW Reboot
4. What are your top five fics by kudos?
- Couch Surfing (COD, soapghost)
- Broken Bones & Shattered Hearts (COD, soapghost)
- Up in Smoke (COD, soapghost)
- Formalities (Voltron, sheith)
- Research and Development (Voltron, sheith)
5. Do you respond to comments? YES. I love talking to people in the comments. 😍
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Probably Couch Surfing because it's an "in progress" ending. But it's still mostly happy because I can't really write anything else. LOL
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Probably Formalities? But all of them are pretty tooth-rotting...
8. Do you get hate on fics? No
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes, but it's always slow burn smut with feelings (hi, I'm ace).
10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I love thinking about crossovers, but I haven't written any yet (unless you count the AU from question 13, I guess).
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Not that I know of.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? The soapghost Punisher AU I'm working on with @kibagib - You're my mask, you're my cover, my shelter - is basically co-written. Kiba gives me the outline for what they want to happen in the scene, and I write it out, adding my own flare here and there. It's been so much fun to work together to bring Kiba's visions to life!
14. What’s your all time favorite ship? As much as I love soapghost, I think sheith will always have my heart.
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? So far, I've finished or am actively working on all my WIPs... 😯 I do have an idea for a soapghost inter-dimensional-travel, angst-with-a-bittersweet ending fic, but that one hasn't gotten past outline phase. That's the closest I have to a fic I might never finish. (This fic would also win "angstiest ending," btw.)
16. What are your writing strengths? I think I write dialogue and emotions/introspection pretty well.
17. What are your writing weaknesses? I struggle with descriptions - they are often what I "add in" during the editing phases. I'm also a VERY SLOW writer, which is why it takes so long to update sometimes.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I don't do it unless I have a native speaker willing to help me with the translation. Otherwise, it's just English but in italics. LOL
19. First fandom you wrote for? Dragon Age (long ago with a different user name)
20. Favourite fic you’ve written? I love them all, but my first sheith fic - In Sunshine and in Shadow - will always be special to me because it helped me process that atrocious VLD ending.
Tagging... errmmmm... @oodelally9 @kayluvlygrey @hawkeykirsah @ticktockclockwork @ursae-minoris-world @insomnikat-mused @chalkofthevalley
No pressure! Ignore or play as you like!
#sheith#shiro x keith#soapghost#ghostsoap#ghoap#COD#vld#Call of Duty#COD MW reboot#writing#my writing#OG Starlight
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Avatar Azula AU musings
I really want Ursa to be there during the final battle between Azula and Ozai (Like he brought her along so she could see him burning Hira'a?) but I can't help but think it would be contrived
Is it weird that these decisions stress me out
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Think it’s time I brought back a muse I was testing on my previous blog!
Ursa is a full-blooded orc barbarian, every bit the beastly powerhouse in combat as you’d expect from her species. While she’s scary when she’s swinging around an axe, though, she can be very jolly and flirtatious off the battlefield. She lives for three things: feasting, fighting, and fuuuuckin, and the closer those three things can be in correlation to each other, the better. She’s always eager to challenge strong, virile competitors of all genders to tests of strength, winner takes loser. And while she often uses these as a means of quick stress relief after a decisive victory, if a strong enough opponent can come out on top and make her submit, she’ll be in sheer bliss, never wanting it to end.
The visual reference I use for her is the typical orc female drawn by JustSomeNoob. The pic above is an example, as are these three, though they’re much more lewd by comparison. (1) (2) (3)
Don’t be shy! Come on and interact with her, whether through asks or other posts! She deserves a good time too~
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Constellations
Belphegor x GN!Reader
Content: Freckled mc, sleepy cuddles!!! Belphie finding constellations in your freckles, sleepy kisses <3, use of pet name (starlight)
A/N: my asks are open for requests! I don’t do anything past suggestive as that is all I’m comfortable with! As of rn it’s just obey me!
“They’re like stars,” Belphie hummed, gently tracing lines from freckle to freckle on your face. He delighted in the way your nose scrunched in your sleep, before you relaxed again and your expression returned to the tranquil look that Belphie loved so much.
The attic was cozy and quiet, a blanket lazily tossed over the both of you. The only sound in the room your steady breathing and resting heartbeat.
After a minute or so, your eyes fluttered open at his feather-light touches.
“Good morning, starlight.” Belphie smiled, finally resting his palm against your cheek. It was rare that he was awake before you, much less alert enough to tease you.
“G’mornin Belphie.” You rubbed the sleep from your eyes, trying to burrow yourself further into him to steal more of his warmth.
Belphie smiled and rolled over so that he was on his back, bringing you with him like his own personal weighted blanket.
“You’re more awake than usual,” you mused, finally looking up at your lover.
“I was just looking at you. Your freckles remind me of stars, I can find constellations in them.” Belphie moved his hand up to trace the spots on your face with his pointer finger. “Here’s Ursa Minor,” he started, “And here’s the Phoenix,”
The light touches sent a shiver down your spine and you smiled, “You know I can’t see them, right?”
“Yeah, but I still like pointing them out.” Belphie smiled, wrapping his arms around your waist and rolling back onto his side, "I like looking at you."
You wiggled so that you were nose to nose with Belphie, placing kisses all over his face. Finally, you smooshed your lips against his in an ungraceful, sleepy kiss.
Belphie hummed and returned the kiss, a lazy hand rubbing circles on your back.
When you finally pulled away, his magenta eyes bore into yours with so much love that you could feel it in your heart. You smiled, cupping his cheek with your hand and placing another quick kiss on his lips before burrowing back against him to sleep a little longer.
It wasn't quite time to get up, after all.
#obey me shall we date#obey me#obey me belphegor x reader#obey me belphegor#obey me belphie#obey me belphie x reader
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6 + benthan for the writing prompts
thank you for the ask!
things you said under the stars and in the grass
Field work is much dirtier than tech work, as a general rule.
Benji didn't think that meant literal dirt, but when Ethan Hunt is involved...
They're staked out on a night watch in a field in the middle of nowhere, for some reason that he's forgotten because it really doesn’t matter in the end why they’re babysitting a bunch of equipment in the middle of nowhere with no reception to speak of, waiting for the sensors to get all the telemetry they need, and Benji is realizing that he forgot to bring his allergy meds along with him, so he’ll be sneezing up a storm tomorrow.
Ethan, on the other hand, prime specimen of human ability that he is, is laying back with his hand behind his head, staring up at the stars.
“Did you learn the constellations when you were a kid?” Ethan asks him.
Benji lays down beside him, setting his tablet down on his chest. “No,” he says. “I mean, a little bit. There was too much light where I grew up, you could hardly see the stars.”
Ethan hums. “That’s too bad. I had this book when I was a kid on celestial navigation—”
“Bit boring for a kid, don’t you think?”
“Not when you wanted to be a pirate,” Ethan grins.
“Little Ethan Hunt wanted to be a pirate? How’d he end up like this?” Benji turns to look at Ethan. He’s so relaxed and open, so unlike the man, the agent, that Benji knows.
“He pulled the most perfect prank in the history of the world, and the rest is history.”
Benji laughs. “No, come on, that can’t be it.” Ethan stares up at the stars, but his smile is telling.
“No shit? A prank got you recruited by the IMF?”
“What can I say? Playing Frederic in Pirates of Penzance was a great way to hone my craft. It was the closest I ever got to being a pirate, too.
“What did you want to be when you grew up, Benji?” Ethan asks. His voice is low, but in the way a person speaks quietly when the world has shrunk to just the conversation they are sharing.
“I didn’t really know,” he admits. “I was good at maths, and computers came along with that. I liked Alan Turing when I was a kid. Cryptography seemed interesting, but I wasn’t good enough at developing ciphers for that line of work. Still, I ended up a spy after all, huh?”
“So Benji Dunn is living out his childhood dreams,” Ethan muses. “That’s nice.”
“What about you Ethan? Did you get your dreams?”
Ethan tilts his head. “Give me your hand, Benji.” Ethan takes his right hand and curls his fingers just so, until it’s just Benji’s pointer finger left out. He guides his hand and points it north.
“Do you see that bright one there? That’s Polaris, the North Star. It’s the tail of Ursa Minor, but we call it the Little Dipper in America. Sailors used to navigate by it.” Ethan traces out the shape of the constellation, like he’s painting a picture in the sky just for Benji. In the Greek myths, Ursa Minor and Ursa Major,” and Ethan guides him just below the North Star, tracing out another constellation, “were the lover and son of Zeus. He changed them into bears and placed them in the sky to protect them from Hera’s jealousy.”
“Which one is your favorite?” Benji asks, his voice no more than a whisper.
“What? You wanna hear me talk about stars for the rest of the night?” Ethan jokes.
“Yeah,” Benji says. “That’d be nice.”
Ethan grins, that full-teeth smile he hardly ever uses, the one that Benji loves the most. “Okay. This one is Andromeda, the Chained Lady. Her mother is Cassiopeia, over here, and Cassiopeia looks like stair-steps, that’s how I remembered it when I was a kid…”
send me a pairing and a number!
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